Data Integrity and Quality Analysis of Low Cost Zed-F9p U-Blox Gnss Receiver

Abstract

Thanks to the rapidly emerging low-cost dual-frequency GNSS receivers, a feasible alternative for geodetic-grade GNSS receivers became available for some GNSS applications. In this study, the performance of data integrity and quality of a low-cost ZED-F9P u-blox GNSS receiver was investigated by comparing it with a geodetic-grade GNSS receiver. Availability of the epoch and phase/code signal channels, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), code multipath, and cycle slips were analyzed for the geodetic-grade and low-cost ZED-F9P u-blox GNSS receivers. One month’s data of GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo constellations were analysed using the RINEX files of the receivers. The results showed that the epoch availability of the geodetic-grade and u-blox GNSS receiver is comparable to each other, while the availability of phase/code signal channels of the geodetic-grade receiver is higher than the u-blox receiver. In terms of data quality, SNR values from both receivers are comparable, while the multipath level of the u-blox GNSS receiver is significantly higher than the geodetic-grade one. The results also showed that the number of cycle slips of the u-blox receiver is significantly higher than the geodetic-one.