Systems and methods are disclosed to use adaptive continuous tracking (ACT) to reduce the power consumption of GNSS receivers. In GNSS receivers, a longer observation time of the satellites translates into better positioning accuracy but also consumes more power. ACT allows satellite observation time to be tuned to the desired positioning performance by dynamically adjusting the on time period of the receivers while maintaining a minimum performance metric. The performance metric may be formed from a combination of the estimated position error, the horizontal dilution of precision (HDOP), the data collection state, and the receiver operating environment as characterized by the carrier to noise ratio (CN0). ACT cyclically switches on/off the radio frequency (RF) front-end and also cyclically enables/disables the baseband hardware of the receivers to reduce power consumption while allowing the receivers to meet the minimum performance metric and ensuring continuous satellite tracking, continuous positioning fix operation, multiplexed GNSS operation, and continuous data collection.