New Opportunities for Mass-Market Applications of Real-Time Variometric Velocity Estimated Using Android GNSS Raw Measurements

Few years after the first release of Android GNSS Raw Measurements API, Android smartphones are increasingly becoming the most competitive GNSS mass-market device. The developments in GNSS space and user - mainly related to smartphone manufacturers - segments allowed to show meter and sub-meter accuracy in static and kinematic applications using GNSS observations collected from Android smartphones. Unlike the large number of published researches which deals with the analyses of Android GNSS Raw Measurements and the achievable accuracy in the position domain, the aim of this work is to study the velocity field directly estimated in pedestrian scenarios from Android GNSS measurements. The 3D velocity, estimated with accuracy from few mm/s to 1–2 cm/s - respectively for the horizontal and vertical components - with the kin-VADASE (Variometric Apporach for Displacement Analysis Stand-alone Engine) developed at Sapienza University of Rome, are here applied in the field of gestures reconstruction and heading determination in pedestrian scenarios. The results discussed in the paper show immediate, stable and reliable velocity confirming the key role that Android smartphones are acquiring in mass-market application, e.g. mHealth, AR, fitness and sports.