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Cooperative Differential GNSS Positioning: Estimators and Bounds

Published: January 9, 2026 | arXiv ID: 2601.06012v1

By: Helena Calatrava, Daniel Medina, Pau Closas

Potential Business Impact:

Makes GPS more accurate with many users.

Business Areas:
GPS Hardware, Navigation and Mapping

In Differential GNSS (DGNSS) positioning, differencing measurements between a user and a reference station suppresses common-mode errors but also introduces reference-station noise, which fundamentally limits accuracy. This limitation is minor for high-grade stations but becomes significant when using reference infrastructure of mixed quality. This paper investigates how large-scale user cooperation can mitigate the impact of reference-station noise in conventional (non-cooperative) DGNSS systems. We develop a unified estimation framework for cooperative DGNSS (C-DGNSS) and cooperative real-time kinematic (C-RTK) positioning, and derive parameterized expressions for their Fisher information matrices as functions of network size, satellite geometry, and reference-station noise. This formulation enables theoretical analysis of estimation performance, identifying regimes where cooperation asymptotically restores the accuracy of DGNSS with an ideal (noise-free) reference. Simulations validate these theoretical findings.

Country of Origin
πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ United States

Page Count
19 pages

Category
Electrical Engineering and Systems Science:
Signal Processing