Positioning, 2015, 6, 71-80 Published Online November 2015 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/pos http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/pos.2015.64008 How to cite this paper: El-Diasty, M. and Elsobeiey, M. (2015) Precise Point Positioning Technique with IGS Real-Time Service (RTS) for Maritime Applications. Positioning, 6, 71-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/pos.2015.64008 Precise Point Positioning Technique with IGS Real-Time Service (RTS) for Maritime Applications Mohammed El-Diasty 1,2 , Mohamed Elsobeiey 1 1 Department of Hydrographic Surveying, Faculty of Maritime Studies, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 2 Engineering Department of Public Works, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt Received 29 September 2015; accepted 1 November 2015; published 4 November 2015 Copyright © 2015 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract The maritime navigation accuracy requirements for radionavigation systems such as GPS are spe- cified by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Maritime navigation usually consists of three major phases identified as Ocean/Coastal/Port approach/Inland waterway, in port naviga- tion and automatic docking with an accuracy requirement that ranges from 10 m to 0.1 m. With the advancement in autonomous GPS positioning techniques such as Precise Point Positioning (PPP) and with the advent of the new IGS-Real-Time-Service (RTS), it is necessary to assess the possibility of a wider role of the PPP-based positioning technique in maritime applications. This paper investigates the performance of an autonomous real-time PPP-positioning solution by using the IGS- RTS service for maritime applications that require an accurate positioning system. To examine the performance of the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based technique for maritime applications, kinematic data from a dual frequency GPS receiver is investigated. It is shown that the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based GPS positioning technique fulfills IMO requirements for maritime applications with an accuracy requirement ranges from 10 m for Ocean/Coastal/Port approach/Inland water- ways navigation to 1.0 m for in port navigation but cannot fulfill the automatic docking application with an accuracy requirement of 0.10 m. To further investigate the real-time PPP-based GPS posi- tioning technique, a comparison is made between the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based positioning technique and the real-time PPP-based positioning by using the predicted part of the IGS Ul- tra-Rapid products and the real-time GPS positioning technique with the Wide Area Differential GPS service (WADGPS). It is shown that the IGS-RTS PPP-based positioning technique is superior to the IGS-Ultra-Rapid PPP-based and WADGPS-based positioning techniques. Keywords Real-Time Service, RTS, Maritime, Navigation, IGS, GPS, IMO, Ultra-Rapid, WADGPS