Experience: Unveiling GNSS-RTK in the Wild: A 2.5-Year Nationwide Study via Last-Mile Delivery

摘要

GNSS-Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) is designed to deliver precise GNSS positioning, yet its in-the-wild performance on smartphones (i.e., accessibility, precision, and utility) remains unknown. We present the first nationwide, in-the-wild measurement of GNSS-RTK, conducted over 2.5 years across 370 cities in China. Specifically, we leverage the operational processes of JD Logistics, a leading Chinese delivery company serving over 500 million customers, to enable nationwide GNSS-RTK measurement at scale. During daily operations, delivery couriers routinely traverse different areas with smartphones for positioning, enabling low-cost GNSS-RTK data collection at scale. The collected data provides extensive spatio-temporal coverage and repeated sampling, providing a unique opportunity for comprehensive GNSS-RTK performance measurement. Our large-scale measurement reveals that RTK achieves 92.3% overall accessibility, improves precision by 0.95 m over standalone GNSS, and yields an estimated $1.37M in recurring annual benefits from anomaly delivery detection and delivery distance measurement, together with $1.2M in one-time benefits from address coordinate mining.