Single-Frequency Kinematic Performance Comparison between Galileo, GPS, and GLONASS Satellite Positioning Systems Using an MMS-Generated Trajectory as a Reference: Preliminary Results

The initial Galileo satellite positioning services, started on December 15, 2016, became available with a formal announcement by the European Commission. This first step toward the Galileo system Full Operational Capability (FOC) has allowed many researchers to test the new system. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the results and the conclusions of a kinematic test involving a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) multi-constellation receiver able to acquire the Galileo Open Service (OS) signal. The produced outputs were compared to a reference trajectory obtained from a Mobile Mapping System (MMS) implementing integrated high-performance GPS/INS measurements. By exploiting the CUI (command user interface) of the open source library RTKLIB, a reduced operative status was simulated for GPS and GLONASS. Specifically, all the possible operative combinations were tested and, when possible, statistically assessed. This was necessary to offer a fair comparison among the tested constellations. The results, referred to the reference trajectory, show that the new European system is characterized by a better planimetric performance with respect to the other systems, whereas, from an altimetric point of view, the GPS and GLONASS systems perform better.