Investigation of the usability of mobile devices in engineering measurements using various external antennas

This study examines the usability of mobile devices with external antennas in engineering measurements and the location accuracies obtained. With the developing GNSS technologies, the effects of mobile devices with different operating systems and various external antennas on location accuracy were evaluated. Within the scope of the application, location data were collected with Android and IOS based mobile devices, with and without external antennas, and these data were compared with the reference coordinates obtained with sensitive GNSS receivers. Devices such as D10 Rugged tablet, CHCNAV LT800H tablet, Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G, Apple iPad Pro and iPhone 15 Pro were used in the study; u-blox, unicore and ViDoc RTK were preferred as antennas. In the measurements made with the devices without antennas, the error values were at the meter level, and in the measurements with antenna integration, the error rates of the antenna-free devices increased significantly. Especially in areas with woods, high density of structures or weak signals, the error rates of the antenna-free devices increased significantly. The findings obtained indicate that when mobile devices are used with external antennas and correction systems, they can provide coordinate values close to GNSS receivers used in the mapping sector. It shows that it can be a suitable alternative in applications that do not require high accuracy. However, GNSS receivers should be preferred in engineering projects that require high precision, such as deformation measurements. In this context, mobile devices offer a wide range of applications with their advantages such as portability, low cost and ease of use.