scholarly journals An Improved Fast Estimation of Satellite Phase Fractional Cycle Biases

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 334
Author(s):  
Ke Qi ◽  
Yamin Dang ◽  
Changhui Xu ◽  
Shouzhou Gu

Satellite phase fractional cycle biases (FCBs) are crucial to precise point positioning with ambiguity resolution (PPP–AR), and they can improve the accuracy and reliability of a solution. Traditional methods need multiple iterations and need to keep the same reference when estimating satellite phase fractional cycle biases. In this paper, we propose an improved fast estimation of FCB, which does not need any iterations and can select any reference when estimating FCB. We compare the suitability and precision of a traditional and a proposed method by BDS-3 experiments. The results of the FCB experiments show that the calculated time of the proposed method is less than the traditional method and that computation efficiency is increased by 34.71%. These two methods have a similar rate of fixed epochs and ambiguities in the static and dynamic models. However, the time to first fix (TTFF) of the proposed method decreased by 19.69% and 28.83% for the static and dynamic models, respectively. The results show that the proposed method has a better convergence time in PPP–AR.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1853
Author(s):  
Jin Wang ◽  
Guanwen Huang ◽  
Qin Zhang ◽  
Yang Gao ◽  
Yuting Gao ◽  
...  

In this study, an uncombined precise point positioning (PPP) model was established and was used for estimating fractional cycle bias (FCB) products and for achieving ambiguity resolution (AR), using GPS, BDS-2, and Galileo raw observations. The uncombined PPP model is flexible and efficient for positioning services and generating FCB. The FCBs for GPS, BDS-2, and Galileo were estimated using the uncombined PPP model with observations from the Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations. The root mean squares (RMSs) of the float ambiguity a posteriori residuals associated with all of the three GNSS constellations, i.e., GPS, BDS-2, and Galileo, are less than 0.1 cycles for both narrow-lane (NL) and wide-lane (WL) combinations. The standard deviation (STD) of the WL combination FCB series is 0.015, 0.013, and 0.006 cycles for GPS, BDS-2, and Galileo, respectively, and the counterpart for the NL combination FCB series is 0.030 and 0.0184 cycles for GPS and Galileo, respectively. For the BDS-2 NL combination FCB series, the STD of the inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) satellites is 0.0156 cycles, while the value for the medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites is 0.073 cycles. The AR solutions produced by the uncombined multi-GNSS PPP model were evaluated from the positioning biases and the success fixing rate of ambiguity. The experimental results demonstrate that the growth of the amount of available satellites significantly improves the PPP performance. The three-dimensional (3D) positioning accuracies associated with the PPP ambiguity-fixed solutions for the respective only-GPS, GPS/BDS-2, GPS/Galileo, and GPS/BDS-2/Galileo models are 1.34, 1.19, 1.21, and 1.14 cm, respectively, and more than a 30% improvement is achieved when compared to the results related to the ambiguity-float solutions. Additionally, the convergence time based on the GPS/BDS-2/Galileo observations is only 7.5 min for the ambiguity-fixed solutions, and the results exhibit a 53% improvement in comparison to the ambiguity-float solutions. The values of convergence time based on the only-GPS observations are estimated as 22 and 10.5 min for the ambiguity-float and ambiguity-fixed solutions, respectively. Lastly, the success fixing rate of ambiguity is also dramatically raised for the multi-GNSS PPP AR. For example, the percentage is approximately 99% for the GPS/BDS-2/Galileo solution over a 10 min processing period. In addition, the inter-system bias (ISB) between GPS, BDS-2, and Galileo, which is carefully considered in the uncombined multi-GNSS PPP method, is modeled as a white noise process. The differences of the ISB series between BDS-2 and Galileo indicate that the clock datum bias of the satellite clock offset estimation accounts for the variation of the ISB series.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Nistor ◽  
A. S. Buda

Abstract Because of the dynamics of the GPS technique used in different domains like geodesy, near real-time GPS meteorology, geodynamics, the precise point positioning (PPP) becomes more than a powerful method for determining the position, or the delay caused by the atmosphere. The main idea of this method is that we need only one receiver – preferably that have dual frequencies pseudorange and carrier-phase capabilities – to obtain the position. Because we are using only one receiver the majority of the residuals that are eliminated in double differencing method, we have to estimate them in PPP. The development of the PPP method allows us, to use precise satellite clock estimates, and precise orbits, resulting in a much more efficient way to deal with the disadvantages of this technique, like slow convergence time, or ambiguity resolution. Because this two problem are correlated, to achieve fast convergence we need to resolve the problem of ambiguity resolution. But the accuracy of the PPP results are directly influenced by presence of the uncalibrated phase delays (UPD) originating in the receivers and satellites. In this article we present the GPS errors and biases, the zenith wet delay and the necessary time for obtaining the convergence. The necessary correction are downloaded by using the IGS service.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 3220
Author(s):  
Honglei Qin ◽  
Peng Liu ◽  
Li Cong ◽  
Xia Xue

Although precise point positioning (PPP) is a well-established and promising technique with the use of precise satellite orbit and clock products, it costs a long convergence time to reach a centimeter-level positioning accuracy. The PPP with ambiguity resolution (PPP-AR) technique can improve convergence performance by resolving ambiguities after separating the fractional cycle bias (FCB). Now the FCB estimation is mainly realized by the regional or global operating reference station network. However, it does not work well in the areas where network resources are scarce. The contribution of this paper is to realize an ambiguity residual constraint-based PPP with partial ambiguity resolution (PPP-PARC) under no real-time network corrections to speed up the convergence, especially when the performance of the float solution is poor. More specifically, the update strategy of FCB estimation in a stand-alone receiver is proposed to realize the PPP-PAR. Thereafter, the solving process of FCB in a stand-alone receiver is summarized. Meanwhile, the influencing factors of the ambiguity success rate in the PPP-PAR without network corrections are analyzed. Meanwhile, the ambiguity residual constraint is added to adapt the particularity of the partial ambiguity-fixing without network corrections. Moreover, the positioning experiments with raw observation data at the Global Positioning System (GPS) globally distributed reference stations are conducted to determine the ambiguity residual threshold for post-processing and real-time scenarios. Finally, the positioning performance was verified by 22 GPS reference stations. The results show that convergence time is reduced by 15.8% and 26.4% in post-processing and real-time scenarios, respectively, when the float solution is unstable, compared with PPP using a float solution. However, if the float solution is stable, the PPP-PARC method has performance similar to the float solution. The method shows the significance of the PPP-PARC for future PPP applications in areas where network resource is deficient.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 3266
Author(s):  
Chao Chen ◽  
Guorui Xiao ◽  
Guobin Chang ◽  
Tianhe Xu ◽  
Liu Yang

Suffering from hardware phase biases originating from satellites and the receiver, precise point positioning (PPP) requires a long convergence time to reach centimeter coordinate accuracy, which is a major drawback of this technique and limits its application in time-critical applications. Ambiguity resolution (AR) is the key to a fast convergence time and a high-precision solution for PPP technology and PPP AR products are critical to implement PPP AR. Nowadays, various institutions provide PPP AR products in different forms with different strategies, which allow to enable PPP AR for Global Positioning System (GPS) and Galileo or BeiDou Navigation System (BDS). To give a full evaluation of PPP AR performance with various products, this work comprehensively investigates the positioning performance of GPS-only and multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) combination PPP AR with the precise products from CNES, SGG, CODE, and PRIDE Lab using our in-house software. The positioning performance in terms of positioning accuracy, convergence time and fixing rate (FR) as well as time to first fix (TTFF), was assessed by static and kinematic PPP AR models. For GPS-only, combined GPS and Galileo PPP AR with different products, the positioning performances were all comparable with each other. Concretely, the static positioning errors can be reduced by 21.0% (to 0.46 cm), 52.5% (to 0.45 cm), 10.0% (to 1.33 cm) and 21.7% (to 0.33 cm), 47.4% (to 0.34 cm), 9.5% (to 1.16 cm) for GPS-only and GE combination in north, east, up component, respectively, while the reductions are 20.8% (to 1.13 cm), 42.9% (to 1.15 cm), 19.9% (to 3.4 cm) and 20.4% (to 0.72 cm), 44.1% (to 0.66 cm), 10.1% (to 2.44 cm) for kinematic PPP AR. Overall, the positioning performance with CODE products was superior to the others. Furthermore, multi-GNSS observations had significant improvements in PPP performance with float solutions and the TTFF as well as the FR of GPS PPP AR could be improved by adding observations from other GNSS. Additionally, we have released the source code for multi-GNSS PPP AR, anyone can freely access the code and example data from GitHub.


2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Altti Jokinen ◽  
Shaojun Feng ◽  
Wolfgang Schuster ◽  
Washington Ochieng ◽  
Chris Hide ◽  
...  

The Precise Point Positioning (PPP) concept enables centimetre-level positioning accuracy by employing one Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver. The main advantage of PPP over conventional Real Time Kinematic (cRTK) methods is that a local reference network infrastructure is not required. Only a global reference network with approximately 50 stations is needed because reference GNSS data is required for generating precise error correction products for PPP. However, the current implementation of PPP is not suitable for some applications due to the long time period (i.e. convergence time of up to 60 minutes) required to obtain an accurate position solution. This paper presents a new method to reduce the time required for initial integer ambiguity resolution and to improve position accuracy. It is based on combining GPS and GLONASS measurements to calculate the float ambiguity positioning solution initially, followed by the resolution of GPS integer ambiguities.The results show that using the GPS/GLONASS float solution can, on average, reduce the time to initial GPS ambiguity resolution by approximately 5% compared to using the GPS float solution alone. In addition, average vertical and horizontal positioning errors at the initial ambiguity resolution epoch can be reduced by approximately 17% and 4%, respectively.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Fei Liu ◽  
Yang Gao

With the availability of the third civil signal in the Global Positioning System, triple-frequency Precise Point Positioning ambiguity resolution methods have drawn increasing attention due to significantly reduced convergence time. However, the corresponding triple-frequency based precise clock products are not widely available and adopted by applications. Currently, most precise products are generated based on ionosphere-free combination of dual-frequency L1/L2 signals, which however are not consistent with the triple-frequency ionosphere-free carrier-phase measurements, resulting in inaccurate positioning and unstable float ambiguities. In this study, a GPS triple-frequency PPP ambiguity resolution method is developed using the widely used dual-frequency based clock products. In this method, the interfrequency clock biases between the triple-frequency and dual-frequency ionosphere-free carrier-phase measurements are first estimated and then applied to triple-frequency ionosphere-free carrier-phase measurements to obtain stable float ambiguities. After this, the wide-lane L2/L5 and wide-lane L1/L2 integer property of ambiguities are recovered by estimating the satellite fractional cycle biases. A test using a sparse network is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method. The results show that the ambiguity resolution can be achieved in minutes even tens of seconds and the positioning accuracy is in decimeter level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qile Zhao ◽  
Jing Guo ◽  
Sijing Liu ◽  
Jun Tao ◽  
Zhigang Hu ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Precise Point Positioning (PPP) technique uses a single Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver to collect carrier-phase and code observations and perform centimeter-accuracy positioning together with the precise satellite orbit and clock corrections provided. According to the observations used, there are basically two approaches, namely, the ionosphere-free combination approach and the raw observation approach. The former eliminates the ionosphere effects in the observation domain, while the latter estimates the ionosphere effects using uncombined and undifferenced observations, i.e., so-called raw observations. These traditional techniques do not fix carrier-phase ambiguities to integers, if the additional corrections of satellite hardware biases are not provided to the users. To derive the corrections of hardware biases in network side, the ionosphere-free combination operation is often used to obtain the ionosphere-free ambiguities from the L1 and L2 ones produced even with the raw observation approach in earlier studies. This contribution introduces a variant of the raw observation approach that does not use any ionosphere-free (or narrow-lane) combination operator to derive satellite hardware bias and compute PPP ambiguity float and fixed solution. The reparameterization and the manipulation of design matrix coefficients are described. A computational procedure is developed to derive the satellite hardware biases on WL and L1 directly. The PPP ambiguity-fixed solutions are obtained also directly with WL/L1 integer ambiguity resolutions. The proposed method is applied to process the data of a GNSS network covering a large part of China. We produce the satellite biases of BeiDou, GPS and Galileo. The results demonstrate that both accuracy and convergence are significantly improved with integer ambiguity resolution. The BeiDou contributions on accuracy and convergence are also assessed. It is disclosed for the first time that BeiDou only ambiguity-fixed solutions achieve the similar accuracy with that of GPS/Galileo combined, at least in mainland China. The numerical analysis demonstrates that the best solutions are achieved by GPS/Galileo/BeiDou solutions. The accuracy in horizontal components is better than 6 mm, and in the height component better than 20 mm (one sigma). The mean convergence time for reliable ambiguity-fixing is about 1.37 min with 0.12 min standard deviation among stations without using ionosphere corrections and the third frequency measurements. The contribution of BDS is numerically highlighted.


GPS Solutions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pan Li ◽  
Xinyuan Jiang ◽  
Xiaohong Zhang ◽  
Maorong Ge ◽  
Harald Schuh

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