GNSS code and carrier phase observations of a Huawei P30 smartphone: quality assessment and centimeter-accurate positioning

Abstract

In 2016, an application programming interface was added to the Android operating systems, which enables the access of GNSS raw observations. Since then, an in-depth evaluation of the performance of smartphone GNSS chips is very much simplified. We analyzed the quality of the GNSS observations, especially the carrier phase observations, of the dual-frequency GNSS chip Kirin 980 built into Huawei P30 and other smartphones. More than 80 h of static observations were collected at several locations. The code and carrier phase observations were processed in baseline mode with reference to observations of geodetic-grade equipment. We were able to fix carrier phase ambiguities for GPS L1 observations. Furthermore, we performed an antenna calibration for this frequency, which revealed that the horizontal phase center offsets from the central vertical axis of the smartphone and also the phase center variations do not exceed 1–2 cm. After successful ambiguity fixing, the 3D position errors (standard deviations) are smaller 4 cm after 5 min of static observation session and 2 cm for long observation session.