Impact of ambiguity resolution with sequential constraints on real-time precise GPS satellite orbit determination

GPS Solutions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zongnan Li ◽  
Min Li ◽  
Chuang Shi ◽  
Lei Fan ◽  
Yang Liu ◽  
...  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 2815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingxing Li ◽  
Jiaqi Wu ◽  
Keke Zhang ◽  
Xin Li ◽  
Yun Xiong ◽  
...  

The rapid growing number of earth observation missions and commercial low-earth-orbit (LEO) constellation plans have provided a strong motivation to get accurate LEO satellite position and velocity information in real time. This paper is devoted to improve the real-time kinematic LEO orbits through fixing the zero-differenced (ZD) ambiguities of onboard Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) phase observations. In the proposed method, the real-time uncalibrated phase delays (UPDs) are estimated epoch-by-epoch via a global-distributed network to support the ZD ambiguity resolution (AR) for LEO satellites. By separating the UPDs, the ambiguities of onboard ZD GPS phase measurements recover their integer nature. Then, wide-lane (WL) and narrow-lane (NL) AR are performed epoch-by-epoch and the real-time ambiguity–fixed orbits are thus obtained. To validate the proposed method, a real-time kinematic precise orbit determination (POD), for both Sentinel-3A and Swarm-A satellites, was carried out with ambiguity–fixed and ambiguity–float solutions, respectively. The ambiguity fixing results indicate that, for both Sentinel-3A and Swarm-A, over 90% ZD ambiguities could be properly fixed with the time to first fix (TTFF) around 25–30 min. For the assessment of LEO orbits, the differences with post-processed reduced dynamic orbits and satellite laser ranging (SLR) residuals are investigated. Compared with the ambiguity–float solution, the 3D orbit difference root mean square (RMS) values reduce from 7.15 to 5.23 cm for Sentinel-3A, and from 5.29 to 4.01 cm for Swarm-A with the help of ZD AR. The SLR residuals also show notable improvements for an ambiguity–fixed solution; the standard deviation values of Sentinel-3A and Swarm-A are 4.01 and 2.78 cm, with improvements of over 20% compared with the ambiguity–float solution. In addition, the phase residuals of ambiguity–fixed solution are 0.5–1.0 mm larger than those of the ambiguity–float solution; the possible reason is that the ambiguity fixing separate integer ambiguities from unmodeled errors used to be absorbed in float ambiguities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1098 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Ye ◽  
Yunbin Yuan ◽  
Baocheng Zhang ◽  
Bingfeng Tan ◽  
Jikun Ou

Abnormal information of satellite orbits inevitably appears in the broadcast ephemeris. Failure to obtain unhealthy information on GPS satellite orbits in precise orbit determination (POD) degrades GPS service performance. At present, the reliable unhealthy information published by the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) is usually used, but it has at least one-day latency, and the current level of unhealthy information cannot fully meet the requirements of rapid and real-time geodetic applications, especially for non-IGS (International global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) Service) analysis centers and BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) users. Furthermore, the unhealthy orbit information detected by the traditional method, which is based on the synchronized pseudo-range residuals and regional observation network, cannot meet the requirement of setting separate sub-arcs in POD. In view of these problems, we propose a three-step method for determining unhealthy time periods of GPS satellite orbit in broadcast ephemeris during POD to provide reliable unhealthy information in near-real time. This method is a single-epoch solution, and it can detect unhealthy time periods in each sampling of observation in theory. It was subsequently used to detect unhealthy time periods for satellites G09 and G01 based on the 111 globally distributed tracking stations in the IGS. The performance of the new method was evaluated using cross-validation. Based on the test results, it detected an orbital leap for G09 in the broadcast ephemeris from 09:59:42 to 14:00:42 on 25 August 2017. Compared to the traditional method, the unhealthy start time using the three-step method was in better agreement with the information provided by CODE’s satellite crux files. G01 did not appear to have an orbital leap on the specified date, but it was misjudged by the traditional method. Furthermore, compared to the traditional method, the three-step method can perform unhealthy time period detection for a satellite all day long. In addition, precise orbit determination for unhealthy satellites is realized successfully with the unhealthy orbit arc information identified in this study. Compared to the CODE orbit, the root mean square and standard deviation of the new method for G09 are less than 2 cm, and the three-step method shows an improvement in accuracy compared with the traditional method. From the above results, it can be seen that this study can provide a feasible approach to meet the real-time unhealthy time period detection requirements of a satellite orbit in a broadcast ephemeris during POD. Furthermore, compared to waiting for updates of CODE’s satellite crux files or for accumulating delayed observation data, it has the potential to provide additional information in the process of generating ultra-rapid/real-time orbits.


Aerospace ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Zhiyu Wang ◽  
Zishen Li ◽  
Ningbo Wang ◽  
Mainul Hoque ◽  
Liang Wang ◽  
...  

The real-time integer-ambiguity resolution of the carrier-phase observation is one of the most effective approaches to enhance the accuracy of real-time precise point positioning (PPP), kinematic precise orbit determination (KPOD), and reduced-dynamic precise orbit determination (RPOD) for low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. In this study, the integer phase clock (IPC) and wide-lane satellite bias (WSB) products from CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) are used to fix ambiguity in real time. Meanwhile, the three models of real-time PPP, KPOD, and RPOD are applied to validate the contribution of ambiguity resolution. Experimental results show that (1) the average positioning accuracy of IGS stations for ambiguity-fixed solutions is improved from about 7.14 to 5.91 cm, with an improvement of around 17% compared to the real-time float PPP solutions, with enhancement in the east-west direction particularly significant, with an improvement of about 29%; (2) the average accuracy of the estimated LEO orbit with ambiguity-fixed solutions in the real-time KPOD and RPOD mode is improved by about 16% and 10%, respectively, with respect to the corresponding mode with the ambiguity-float solutions; (3) the performance of real-time LEO RPOD is better than that of the corresponding KPOD, regardless of fixed- or float-ambiguity solutions. Moreover, the average ambiguity-fixed ratio can reach more than 90% in real-time PPP, KPOD, and RPOD.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Marins Chiaradia ◽  
Hélio Koiti Kuga ◽  
Antonio Fernando Bertachini de Almeida Prado

An algorithm for real-time and onboard orbit determination applying the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) method is developed. Aiming at a very simple and still fairly accurate orbit determination, an analysis is performed to ascertain an adequacy of modeling complexity versus accuracy. The minimum set of to-be-estimated states to reach the level of accuracy of tens of meters is found to have at least the position, velocity, and user clock offset components. The dynamical model is assessed through several tests, covering force model, numerical integration scheme and step size, and simplified variational equations. The measurement model includes only relevant effects to the order of meters. The EKF method is chosen to be the simplest real-time estimation algorithm with adequate tuning of its parameters. In the developed procedure, the obtained position and velocity errors along a day vary from 15 to 20 m and from 0.014 to 0.018 m/s, respectively, with standard deviation from 6 to 10 m and from 0.006 to 0.008 m/s, respectively, with the SA either on or off. The results, as well as analysis of the final adopted models used, are presented in this work.


GPS Solutions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingyu Zhou ◽  
Hua Chen ◽  
Wenlan Fan ◽  
Xiaohui Zhou ◽  
Qusen Chen ◽  
...  

GPS Solutions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingbing Duan ◽  
Urs Hugentobler

AbstractTo resolve undifferenced GNSS phase ambiguities, dedicated satellite products are needed, such as satellite orbits, clock offsets and biases. The International GNSS Service CNES/CLS analysis center provides satellite (HMW) Hatch-Melbourne-Wübbena bias and dedicated satellite clock products (including satellite phase bias), while the CODE analysis center provides satellite OSB (observable-specific-bias) and integer clock products. The CNES/CLS GPS satellite HMW bias products are determined by the Hatch-Melbourne-Wübbena (HMW) linear combination and aggregate both code (C1W, C2W) and phase (L1W, L2W) biases. By forming the HMW linear combination of CODE OSB corrections on the same signals, we compare CODE satellite HMW biases to those from CNES/CLS. The fractional part of GPS satellite HMW biases from both analysis centers are very close to each other, with a mean Root-Mean-Square (RMS) of differences of 0.01 wide-lane cycles. A direct comparison of satellite narrow-lane biases is not easily possible since satellite narrow-lane biases are correlated with satellite orbit and clock products, as well as with integer wide-lane ambiguities. Moreover, CNES/CLS provides no satellite narrow-lane biases but incorporates them into satellite clock offsets. Therefore, we compute differences of GPS satellite orbits, clock offsets, integer wide-lane ambiguities and narrow-lane biases (only for CODE products) between CODE and CNES/CLS products. The total difference of these terms for each satellite represents the difference of the narrow-lane bias by subtracting certain integer narrow-lane cycles. We call this total difference “narrow-lane” bias difference. We find that 3% of the narrow-lane biases from these two analysis centers during the experimental time period have differences larger than 0.05 narrow-lane cycles. In fact, this is mainly caused by one Block IIA satellite since satellite clock offsets of the IIA satellite cannot be well determined during eclipsing seasons. To show the application of both types of GPS products, we apply them for Sentinel-3 satellite orbit determination. The wide-lane fixing rates using both products are more than 98%, while the narrow-lane fixing rates are more than 95%. Ambiguity-fixed Sentinel-3 satellite orbits show clear improvement over float solutions. RMS of 6-h orbit overlaps improves by about a factor of two. Also, we observe similar improvements by comparing our Sentinel-3 orbit solutions to the external combined products. Standard deviation value of Satellite Laser Ranging residuals is reduced by more than 10% for Sentinel-3A and more than 15% for Sentinel-3B satellite by fixing ambiguities to integer values.


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