Making a difference with GPS: Time differences for kinematic positioning with low-cost receivers

Recently, GPS has turned into a system that is quite maturing as it continues to provide the positioning information to a wide range of civil users. This phenomenon has affected the growth of location-based applications as well as the development of the receiver technology. These receivers are based on miniaturized, low-cost modules which offers a modest accuracy as well as low navigation update rates. Aiming to have a high-accuracy positions, an approach has been investigated that is based on measurement time differences from a single low-cost receiver. This time difference is about expanding the concept of differential GPS to the time domain. Time difference can provide decimeter as well as sub-decimeter precision while eliminating the need for a base receiver or any initialization process. Time-difference-based approach has the advantage of simply canceling the parameters while eliminating the need for a second receiver and dedicated statistical methods.