The quality of atmospheric corrections provided
by a dense reference network for centimeter-accurate carrierphase
differential GNSS (CDGNSS) positioning is investigated.
A dense reference network (less than 20 km inter-station distance)
offers significant benefits for mass-market users, enabling lowcost
(including single-frequency) CDGNSS positioning with rapid
integer ambiguity resolution. Precise positioning on a massmarket
platform would significantly influence the world economy,
ushering in a host of consumer-focused applications such as
globally-registered augmented and virtual reality and improved
all-weather safety and efficiency for intelligent transportation
systems, applications which have so far been hampered by the
several-meter-level errors in standard GNSS positioning. This
contribution examines CDGNSS integer ambiguity resolution
performance in terms of network correction uncertainty, and
network correction uncertainty, in turn, in terms of network
density. It considers the total error in network corrections: a
sum of ionospheric, tropospheric, and reference station multipath
components. The paper’s primary goal is to identify the network
density beyond which mass-market users would see no further
significant improvement in ambiguity resolution performance. It
finishes by describing development and deployment of a low-cost
dense reference network in Austin, Texas.Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanic
