A Decentralized Processing Schema for Efficient and Robust Real-time Multi-GNSS Satellite Clock Estimation

Real-time multi-GNSS precise point positioning (PPP) requires the support of high-rate satellite clock corrections. Due to the large number of ambiguity parameters, it is difficult to update clocks at high frequency in real-time for a large reference network. With the increasing number of satellites of multi-GNSS constellations and the number of stations, real-time high-rate clock estimation becomes a big challenge. In this contribution, we propose a decentralized clock estimation (DECE) strategy, in which both undifferenced (UD) and epoch-differenced (ED) mode are implemented but run separately in different computers, and their output clocks are combined in another process to generate a unique product. While redundant UD and/or ED processing lines can be run in offsite computers to improve the robustness, processing lines for different networks can also be included to improve the clock quality. The new strategy is realized based on the Position and Navigation Data Analyst (PANDA) software package and is experimentally validated with about 110 real-time stations for clock estimation by comparison of the estimated clocks and the PPP performance applying estimated clocks. The results of the real-time PPP experiment using 12 global stations show that with the greatly improved computational efficiency, 3.14 cm in horizontal and 5.51 cm in vertical can be achieved using the estimated DECE clock

Mass-Market Receiver for Static Positioning: Tests and Statistical Analyses

Nowadays, there are several low cost GPS receivers able to provide both pseudorange and carrier phase measurements in the L1band, that allow to have good realtime performances in outdoor condition. The present paper describes a set of dedicated tests in order to evaluate the positioning accuracy in static conditions. The quality of the pseudorange and the carrier phase measurements let hope for interesting results. The use of such kind of receiver could be extended to a large number of professional applications, like engineering fields: survey, georeferencing, monitoring, cadastral mapping and cadastral road. In this work, the receivers performance is verified considering a single frequency solution trying to fix the phase ambiguity, when possible. Different solutions are defined: code, float and fix solutions. In order to solve the phase ambiguities different methods are considered. Each test performed is statistically analyzed, highlighting the effects of different factors on precision and accurac

BDS GNSS for Earth Observation

For millennia, human communities have wondered about the possibility of observing phenomena in their surroundings, and in particular those affecting the Earth on which they live. More generally, it can be conceptually defined as Earth observation (EO) and is the collection of information about the biological, chemical and physical systems of planet Earth. It can be undertaken through sensors in direct contact with the ground or airborne platforms (such as weather balloons and stations) or remote-sensing technologies. However, the definition of EO has only become significant in the last 50 years, since it has been possible to send artificial satellites out of Earth’s orbit. Referring strictly to civil applications, satellites of this type were initially designed to provide satellite images; later, their purpose expanded to include the study of information on land characteristics, growing vegetation, crops, and environmental pollution. The data collected are used for several purposes, including the identification of natural resources and the production of accurate cartography. Satellite observations can cover the land, the atmosphere, and the oceans. Remote-sensing satellites may be equipped with passive instrumentation such as infrared or cameras for imaging the visible or active instrumentation such as radar. Generally, such satellites are non-geostationary satellites, i.e., they move at a certain speed along orbits inclined with respect to the Earth’s equatorial plane, often in polar orbit, at low or medium altitude, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), thus covering the entire Earth’s surface in a certain scan time (properly called ’temporal resolution’), i.e., in a certain number of orbits around the Earth. The first remote-sensing satellites were the American NASA/USGS Landsat Program; subsequently, the European: ENVISAT (ENVironmental SATellite), ERS (European Remote-Sensing satellite), RapidEye, the French SPOT (Satellite Pour l’Observation de laTerre), and the Canadian RADARSAT satellites were launched. The IKONOS, QuickBird, and GeoEye-1 satellites were dedicated to cartography. The WorldView-1 and WorldView-2 satellites and the COSMO-SkyMed system are more recent. The latest generation are the low payloads called Small Satellites, e.g., the Chinese BuFeng-1 and Fengyun-3 series. Also, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) have captured the attention of researchers worldwide for a multitude of Earth monitoring and exploration applications. On the other hand, over the past 40 years, GNSSs have become an essential part of many human activities. As is widely noted, there are currently four fully operational GNSSs; two of these were developed for military purposes (American NAVstar GPS and Russian GLONASS), whilst two others were developed for civil purposes such as the Chinese BeiDou satellite navigation system (BDS) and the European Galileo. In addition, many other regional GNSSs, such as the South Korean Regional Positioning System (KPS), the Japanese quasi-zenital satellite system (QZSS), and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS/NavIC), will become available in the next few years, which will have enormous potential for scientific applications and geomatics professionals. In addition to their traditional role of providing global positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information, GNSS navigation signals are now being used in new and innovative ways. Across the globe, new fields of scientific study are opening up to examine how signals can provide information about the characteristics of the atmosphere and even the surfaces from which they are reflected before being collected by a receiver. EO researchers monitor global environmental systems using in situ and remote monitoring tools. Their findings provide tools to support decision makers in various areas of interest, from security to the natural environment. GNSS signals are considered an important new source of information because they are a free, real-time, and globally available resource for the EO community

A least squares solution to regionalize VTEC estimates for positioning applications

A new approach is presented to improve the spatial and temporal resolution of the Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) estimates for regional positioning applications. The proposed technique utilises a priori information from the Global Ionosphere Maps (GIMs) of the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE), provided in terms of Spherical Harmonic (SH) coefficients of up to degree and order 15. Then, it updates the VTEC estimates using a new set of base-functions (with better resolution than SHs) while using the measurements of a regional GNSS network. To achieve the highest accuracy possible, our implementation is based on a transformation of the GIM/CODE VTECs to their equivalent coefficients in terms of (spherical) Slepian functions. These functions are band-limited and reflect the majority of signal energy inside an arbitrarily defined region, yet their orthogonal property is remained. Then, new dual-frequency GNSS measurements are introduced to a Least Squares (LS) updating step that modifies the Slepian VTEC coefficients within the region of interest. Numerical application of this study is demonstrated using a synthetic example and ground-based GPS data in South America. The results are also validated against the VTEC estimations derived from independent GPS stations (that are not used in the modelling), and the VTEC products of international centres. Our results indicate that, by using 62 GPS stations in South America, the ionospheric delay estimation can be considerably improved. For example, using the new VTEC estimates in a Precise Point Positioning (PPP) experiment improved the positioning accuracy compared to the usage of GIM/CODE and Klobuchar models. The reductions in the root mean squared of errors were ∼23% and 25% for a day with moderate solar activity while 26% and ∼35% for a day with high solar activity, respectively

Development of Record and Management Software for GPS/Loran Measurements

In this paper, a software implementation that records Global Positioning System (GPS) and long-range navigation (Loran) measurement data output from an integrated GPS/Loran receiver and organizes them based on time is proposed. The purpose of the developed software is to collect measurements from multiple Loran transmitter chains for performance analysis of navigation methods using Loran, and to organize the data based on time to make it easy to use them. In addition, GPS measurements are also collected and managed as ground truth data for performance analysis. The implemented software consists of three modules: recording, classification, and conversion. The recording module records raw text data streamed from the receiver, and the classification module classifies the recorded text data according to the message format. The conversion module parses the classified text data, sorts GPS and Loran measurements based on timestamp, and outputs them according to the software platform of the user to analyze the measurements. Each module of the software runs automatically without user intervention. The functionality of the implemented software was verified using GPS and Loran measurements collected over 24 h from an actual integrated GPS/Loran receiver.Comment: Submitted to ICCAS 202

Precise Point Positioning Augmentation for Various Grades of Global Navigation Satellite System Hardware

The next generation of low-cost, dual-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS receivers, boards, chips and antennas are now quickly entering the market, offering to disrupt portions of the precise GNSS positioning industry with much lower cost hardware and promising to provide precise positioning to a wide range of consumers. The presented work provides a timely, novel and thorough investigation into the positioning performance promise. A systematic and rigorous set of experiments has been carried-out, collecting measurements from a wide array of low-cost, dual-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS boards, chips and antennas introduced in late 2018 and early 2019. These sensors range from dual-frequency, multi-constellation chips in smartphones to stand-alone chips and boards. In order to be comprehensive and realistic, these experiments were conducted in a number of static and kinematic benign, typical, suburban and urban environments. In terms of processing raw measurements from these sensors, the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) GNSS measurement processing mode was used. PPP has become the defacto GNSS positioning and navigation technique for scientific and engineering applications that require dm- to cm-level positioning in remote areas with few obstructions and provides for very efficient worldwide, wide-array augmentation corrections. To enhance solution accuracy, novel contributions were made through atmospheric constraints and the use of dual- and triple-frequency measurements to significantly reduce PPP convergence period. Applying PPP correction augmentations to smartphones and recently released low-cost equipment, novel analyses were made with significantly improved solution accuracy. Significant customization to the York-PPP GNSS measurement processing engine was necessary, especially in the quality control and residual analysis functions, in order to successfully process these datasets. Results for new smartphone sensors show positioning performance is typically at the few dm-level with a convergence period of approximately 40 minutes, which is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude better than standard point positioning. The GNSS chips and boards combined with higher-quality antennas produce positioning performance approaching geodetic quality. Under ideal conditions, carrier-phase ambiguities are resolvable. The results presented show a novel perspective and are very promising for the use of PPP (as well as RTK) in next-generation GNSS sensors for various application in smartphones, autonomous vehicles, Internet of things (IoT), etc

Contributions to ionospheric modeling with GNSS in mapping function, tomography and polar electron

This dissertation focuses on determining the vertical electron content distribution in low and high vertical resolution from ground-based and LEO on board GNSS data and improving the knowledge of ionosphere climatology in northern mid-latitude and polar regions. The novelty is summarized in the following four aspects: The first contribution is to propose a new ionospheric mapping function concept - Barcelona Ionospheric Mapping Function (BIMF), in order to improve STEC (Slant Total Electron Content) conversion accuracy from any given VTEC (Vertical Total Electron Content) model. BIMF is based on the climatic modeling of the VTEC fraction in the second layer - µ2, which is the byproduct of UQRG generated by UPC. The first implementation of BIMF is BIMF-nml for the northern mid-latitudes, where the latitudinal variation of µ2 is neglected. µ2 is modeled as function of date and local time. From the user’s perspective, BIMF is the linear combination of µ2 and the standard ionospheric mapping function, and only needs 41 constant coefficients, making BIMF achieve the simplicity for application. The good performance has been demonstrated in the dSTEC assessment for different IGSGIMs: UQRG, CODG and JPLG. The second contribution is to confirm the capability of UQRG GIMs to detect representative ionospheric features in polar regions through six case studies, including TOI (Tongue of Ionization), trough, flux transfer event, theta-aurora, ionospheric convection patterns and storm enhanced density. The long-term VTEC and µ2 data provide valuable databases for studying the morphology and climatology of polar ionospheric phenomena. The unsupervised clustering results of normalized VTEC distribution show that TOI and polar cap patches exhibit an annual dependence, i.e. most TOI and patches occurring in the North Hemisphere winter and the South Hemisphere summer. The third contribution is to propose a hybrid method - AVHIRO (the Abel-VaryChap Hybrid modeling from topside Incomplete RO data), to solve an ill-posed rank-deficient problem in the Abel electron density retrieval. This work is driven by the future EUMETSAT Polar System 2nd Generation, which provides truncated ionospheric RO data, only below impact heights of 500 km, in order to guarantee a full data gathering of the neutral part. AVHIRO takes advantage of one Linear Vary-Chap model, where the scale height increases linearly with altitude above the F2 layer peak, and uses Powell search to solve the full electron densities, ambiguity term, and four parameters of the Vary-Chap model simultaneously, taking into account the nonlinear interactions between the unknown parameters. The fourth contribution is to take advantage of the geometry brought by combining DORIS, ground-based Galileo, ground-based, LEO-POD and vessel-based GPS data and ingest the multi-source dual-frequency carrier phase measurements into the tomographic model to improve the GIM VTEC estimation precision. The impact of adding each type of measurements, which are Galileo data, vessel-based GPS data, DORIS and LEO-POD GPS data, to ground-based GPS data on GIM product is examined according to two complementing evaluation criteria, JASON-3 VTEC comparison and GPS dSTEC test. This study proves the expected better GIM performance by new data ingestion into tomographic model, which is a successful step forward from conception to initial experimental validation.electrones en resolución vertical baja y alta a partir de medidas GNSS terrestres y a bordo de satélites de órbita baja (LEO), además de utilizar medidas GNSS desde buques y medidas DORIS, además de mejorar el conocimiento de la climatología de la ionosfera en las regiones polares y en latitudes medias del hemisferio norte. Las contribuciones se pueden resumir en los siguientes cuatro aspectos: La primera contribución consiste en proponer un nuevo concepto de función de mapeo ionosférico: la función de mapeo ionosférico de Barcelona (BIMF), con el fin de mejorar la precisión de conversión de STEC (contenido total de electrones inclinado) a partir de cualquier modelo de VTEC (contenido total de electrones vertical). BIMF se basa en el modelado climático de la fracción VTEC en la segunda capa - μ2, que es el subproducto de UQRG generado por UPC. La primera implementación de BIMF es BIMF-nml para las latitudes medias del hemisferio norte. μ2 se modela en función del dia y la hora local. Desde la perspectiva del usuario, BIMF es la combinación lineal de μ2 y la función de mapeo ionosférico estándar, y solo necesita 41 coeficientes constantes, lo que hace que BIMF sea facilmente aplicable. Su buen comportamiento se demostró en la evaluación dSTEC para diferentes IGS GIM: UQRG, CODG y JPLG. La segunda contribución se centró en confirmar la capacidad de los GIM UQRG para detectar características ionosféricas representativas en regiones polares a través de seis estudios de casos, que incluyen lenguas de ionización (TOI), depresión de ionización en forma de canal, sucesos de transferencia de flujo, theta-aurora, patrones de convección ionosférica y densidad aumentada durante tormentas geomagnéticas. Los datos a largo plazo de VTEC y μ2 proporcionan valiosas bases de datos para estudiar la morfología y climatología de los fenómenos ionosféricos polares. Los resultados de agrupamiento no supervisados de la distribución normalizada de VTEC muestran que los TOI y los parches en los casquetes polares exhiben una dependencia anual, es decir, la mayoría de los TOI y parches ocurren en el invierno del Hemisferio Norte y el verano del Hemisferio Sur. La tercera contribución ha consistido en proponer un método híbrido: AVHIRO (el modelo híbrido Abel-VaryChap a partir de datos de RO incompletos en la parte superior), para resolver un problema de rango deficiente en la recuperación de la densidad electrónica con el modelo de Abel. Este trabajo está motivado por el futuro sistema polar EUMETSAT de segunda generación, que proporciona datos truncados de RO ionosférica, sólo por debajo de las alturas de impacto de 500 km, con el fin de garantizar una recopilación completa de medidas de la parte neutra. AVHIRO aprovecha un modelo Linear Vary-Chap, donde la altura de la escala aumenta linealmente con la altitud por encima del pico de la capa F2, y utiliza la búsqueda Powell para resolver las densidades completas de electrones, el término de ambig ¨ uedad y cuatro parámetros del modelo Vary-Chap simultáneamente, teniendo en cuenta las interacciones no lineales entre los parámetros desconocidos. La cuarta contribución es aprovechar la geometría aportada por la combinación de datos GPS DORIS, Galileo en tierra, LEO-POD y en barco, e incorporar las mediciones de la fase de la portadora de doble frecuencia de múltiples fuentes en el modelo tomográfico para mejorar la precisión de estimación de GIM VTEC. El impacto de agregar cada tipo de mediciones, que son datos de Galileo, datos de GPS basados en embarcaciones, datos de GPS DORIS y LEO-POD, a datos de GPS terrestres en productos GIM se examina de acuerdo con dos criterios de evaluación complementarios, comparación con VTEC[JASON-3] y con dSTEC[GPS]. Este estudio demuestra el mejor rendimiento esperado de GIM por la nueva ingesta de datos en el modelo tomográfico, que es un exitoso paso adelante desde la concepción hasta la validación experimental inicial

Maanmittauslaitoksen paikannuspalvelun seurantakäytäntöjen parantaminen

The National Land Survey positioning service offers real-time correction data for code- and phase-based positioning. The service operates on the data of FinnRef reference stations. The data is used to model the error sources affecting GNSS observations. Based on the model, the service sends corrections to the users. The aim of this thesis is to improve the performance of the NLS positioning service by improving its real-time monitoring procedures. The whole monitoring of positioning services is examined, starting from the observations of the reference stations and ending to the user positioning quality. This work defines relevant parameters that should be monitored and investigates different monitoring possibilities. From the possibilities, the ones most suited for the needs of the NLS are implemented. As a result of this work, the applied improvements to the monitoring are presented: enabled internal monitoring procedures of the positioning service software(GNSMART) and the acquired software solutions for external monitoring. The internal monitoring possibilities include mainly alarms triggered by different processes. The external monitoring, mountpoint and positioning quality monitoring, is implemented with the software Alberding-QC.This software has been developed especially for positioning service operators. One conclusion of this thesis recommends that the positioning quality monitoring is done with physical monitoring stations. The achievable positioning performance by using the service in Finland can be verified with 5-10 monitoring stations. In this work, the monitoring stations were not established, instead the software was tested using real-time observation data from available sources. The solutions are computed with the positioning software GNRT-K. The monitoring stations established in the future are recommended to be equipped with good equipment at locations in good observing environments, in order to better separate the quality of the used correction. On top of the monitoring framework established in this work, the monitoring of the NLS positioning service can be raised to a sufficient level.Maanmittauslaitoksen paikannuspalvelu tarjoaa reaaliaikaista korjausdataa koodi- ja vaihepaikannukseen. Palvelun toiminta perustuu FinnRef-referenssiasemien havaintodataan, jonka perusteella GNSS-havaintoihin vaikuttavat virhelähteet mallinnetaan ja mallista muodostetaan käyttäjille lähetettävät korjaukset. Tämän työn tavoitteena on parantaa Maanmittauslaitoksen paikannuspalvelun toimivuutta kehittämällä sen tosiaikaista seurantaa. Paikannuspalveluiden seurantaa käsitellään kokonaisuudessaan alkaen tukiasemien havainnoista ja päättyen palvelun käyttäjän saavuttamaan sijaintitarkkuuteen. Työssä selvitetään mitä parametreja tulisi seurata sekä perehdytään erilaisiin seurantaratkaisuihin joista toteutetaan parhaiten Maanmittauslaitoksen tarpeita vastaavat. Työn tuloksina esitellään toteutetut seurannan kehityskohteet: Käyttöön otetut paikannuspalveluohjelmiston (GNSMART) sisäiset seurantaominaisuudet sekä hankitut ohjelmistot ulkoiseen seurantaan. Sisäiset ominaisuudet sisältävät lähinnä eri prosessien laukaisemat hälytykset. Ulkoinen seuranta, eli mountpointtien ja sijaintiratkaisun seuranta, toteutetaan Alberding-QC-ohjelmistolla. Tämä ohjelmisto on kehitetty erityisesti paikannuspalveluiden tarjoajia varten. Työn yhtenä johtopäätöksenä suositellaan sijantiratkaisun seuranta tehtäväksi fyysisillä seuranta-asemilla. Palvelulla saavutettava sijaintiratkaisun tarkkuus Suomessa pystytään varmistamaan 5-10 seuranta-asemalla. Tässä työssä seuranta-asemia ei vielä perustettu, vaan ohjelmistoja on testattu käyttäen tosiaikaista havaintodataa saatavilla olevista lähteistä. Näistä havainnoista on laskettu tosiaikaiset sijaintiratkaisut GNRT-K-laskentaohjelmistolla. Perustettavilla seuranta-asemilla suositellaan käytettävän riittävän hyviä laitteita sekä havaintoympäristöjä, jotta tuloksissa korostuu käytettävän korjauksen laatu. Tässä työssä perustetun seurannan rungon päälle MML:n paikannuspalvelun seuranta on helppo kehittää riittävälle tasolle

An investigation of new ionospheric models using multi-source measurements and neural networks

Ionosphere is one of the atmospheric layers that has a major impact on human beings since it significantly affects the radio propagation on Earth, and between satellites and Earth (e.g., Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signal transmission). The variation of the electrons in the ionosphere is strongly influenced by the space weather due to solar and cosmic radiation. Hence, the short/long-term trend of the free electrons in the ionosphere has been regarded as very important information for both space weather and GNSS positioning. On the other hand, precisely quantifying the distribution and variation of free electrons at a high spatio-temporal resolution is often a challenge if the number of the electrons (electron density) is detected only from the traditional ionospheric sensors (e.g., ionosonde and topside sounder and Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR)) due to their low spatio-temporal coverage. This disadvantage is also inherited from the empirical ionospheric model developed based on these data sources. Nowadays, the availability of advanced observation techniques, such as GNSS Radio Occultation (RO) and satellite altimetry, for the measurement of Electron Density (Ne) and related parameters (e.g., hmF2, NmF2, Vertical Scale Height (VSH), Electron Density Profile (EDP) and Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC)) in the ionosphere has heralded a new era for space weather research in the upper atmosphere. The new sources of data for ionospheric modelling can improve not only the accuracy but also the reliability of the model (such as[96] for hmF2 and [28] for VTEC). In this study, Helmert Variance Component Estimation (VCE) aided Weight Total Least Squares (WTLS) is selected for modelling global VTEC using International GNSS Service stations, satellite altimetry and GNSS-RO measurements. The results show that the new VTEC model outperforms the traditional global ionospheric VTEC Model by at least 1.5 Total Electron Content Unit (TECU) over the ocean. This improvement is expected to be significant in the refinement of global ionospheric VTEC Model development. As is well known, the most traditional models developed are prone to the effects of inherent assumptions (e.g. for the construction of the base functions in the models) which may lead to large biases in the prediction. In this study, an innovative machine learning technique (i.e. Neural Network (NN)) is investigated as the modelling method to address this issue. Different from the traditional modelling method, neither the observation equations (or the so called `design matrix'), nor apriori knowledge of the relationship (both of them can be considered as the source of the aforementioned assumptions) is required in the modelling process of a NN. This network system can automatically construct an optimal regression function based on a large amount of sample data and the designed network [43]. In this study, Deep Neural Network (DNN), which is an advanced Artificial Neural Network (ANN) (with more than one hidden layer), is investigated for their usability of VSH and topside EDP modelling, as well as the relationship between Ne and electron temperature. The results reveal that the new VSH model agrees better than the traditional model with regards to either out-of-sample measurements or the external reference (i.e. ISR data). In addition, the new model can represent the characteristic of VSH in the equatorial region better than that of traditional approaches during geomagnetic storms. The relationship between Ne and Electron Temperature (Te) investigated from ISR data can be used to improve the performance of the current Te model. The local time-altitude variation of the model outputs agrees well with that from a physical model (i.e., Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Electrodynamics General Circulation Model (TIEGCM)). The new topside EDP model takes hmF2 and NmF2 into consideration as part of the variable set. Comparing with the reference data (i.e., out- of-sample COSMIC data, GRACE and ISR data), the new model agrees much better than the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI)-2016 model. In addition, an advanced NN technique, Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM), is utilised to forecast hmF2 by using the hmF2 measured by Australian ionosondes in the five hours prior. The forecast results are better than the results from real-time models in the next five hours. The new model performs also better than the current hmF2 model (i.e., AMTB [2] and shubin [96] models, which is used inside IRI-2016 model) by at least 10km in most ionosonde stations. Overall, the neural network technique has a great potential in being utilised in the ionospheric modelling. In addition to the accuracy improvement, the physical mechanism can be observed from the model outputs as well. In future work, the neural network is expected to be further applied in some other space weather studies (e.g., Dst, solar flare, etc)

Precise positioning in real-time using GPS-RTK signal for visually impaired people navigation system

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 24/9/2010.This thesis presents the research carried out to investigate and achieve highly reliable and accurate navigation system of guidance for visually impaired pedestrians. The main aim with this PhD project has been to identify the limits and insufficiencies in utilising Network Real-Time Kinematic Global Navigation Satellite Systems (NRTK GNSS) and its augmentation techniques within the frame of pedestrian applications in a variety of environments and circumstances. Moreover, the system can be used in many other applications, including unmanned vehicles, military applications, police, etc. NRTK GNSS positioning is considered to be a superior solution in comparison to the conventional standalone Global Positioning System (GPS) technique whose accuracy is highly affected by the distance dependent errors such as satellite orbital and atmospheric biases. Nevertheless, NRTK GNSS positioning is particularly constrained by wireless data link coverage, delays of correction and transmission and completeness, GPS and GLONASS signal availability, etc., which could downgrade the positioning quality of the NRTK results. This research is based on the dual frequency NRTK GNSS (GPS and GLONASS). Additionally, it is incorporated into several positioning and communication methods responsible for data correction while providing the position solutions, in which all identified contextual factors and application requirements are accounted. The positioning model operates through client-server based architecture consisted of a Navigation Service Centre (NSC) and a Mobile Navigation Unit (MNU). Hybrid functional approaches were consisting of several processing procedures allowing the positioning model to operate in position determination modes. NRTK GNSS and augmentation service is used if enough navigation information was available at the MNU using its local positioning device (GPS/GLONASS receiver).The positioning model at MNU was experimentally evaluated and centimetric accuracy was generally attained during both static and kinematic tests in various environments (urban, suburban and rural). This high accuracy was merely affected by some level of unavailability mainly caused by GPS and GLONASS signal blockage. Additionally, the influence of the number of satellites in view, dilution of precision (DOP) and age corrections (AoC) over the accuracy and stability of the NRTK GNSS solution was also investigated during this research and presented in the thesis. This positioning performance has outperformed the existing GPS service. In addition, utilising a simulation evaluation facility the positioning model at MNU performance was quantified with reference to a hybrid positioning service that will be offered by future Galileo Open Service (OS) along with GPS. However, a significant difference in terms of the service availability for the advantage of the hybrid system was experienced in all remaining scenarios and environments more especially the urban areas due to surrounding obstacles and conditions. As an outcome of this research a new and precise positioning model was proposed. The adaptive framework is understood as approaching an integration of the available positioning technology into the context of surrounding wireless communication for a maintainable performance. The positioning model has the capability of delivering indeed accurate, precise and consistent position solutions, and thus is fulfilling the requirements of visually impaired people navigation application, as identified in the adaptive framework