Undifferenced ionospheric-free ambiguity resolution using GLONASS data from inhomogeneous stations

GLONASS frequency division multiple access signals render ambiguity resolution (AR) rather difficult because: (1) Different wavelengths are used by different satellites, and (2) pseudorange inter-frequency biases (IFBs) cannot be precisely modeled by means of a simple function. In this study, an AR approach based on the ionospheric-free combination with a wavelength of about 5.3 cm is assessed for GLONASS precise point positioning (PPP). This approach simplifies GLONASS AR because pseudorange IFBs do not matter, and PPP-AR can be enabled across inhomogeneous receivers. One month of GLONASS data from 165 European stations were processed for different network size and different durations of observation periods. We find that 89.9% of the fractional parts of ionospheric-free ambiguities agree well within ± 0.15 cycles for a small network (radius = 500 km), while 77.6% for a large network (radius = 2000 km). In case of the 3-hourly GLONASS-only static PPP solutions for the small network, reliable AR can be achieved where the number of fixed GLONASS ambiguities account for 97.6% within all candidate ambiguities. Meanwhile, the RMS of the east, north and up components with respect to daily solutions is improved from 1.0, 0.6, 1.2 cm to 0.4, 0.4, 1.1 cm, respectively. When GPS PPP-AR is carried out simultaneously, the positioning performance can be improved significantly such that the GLONASS ambiguity fixing rate rises from 74.4 to 95.4% in case of hourly solutions. Finally, we introduce ambiguity-fixed GLONASS orbits to re-attempt GLONASS PPP-AR in contrast to the above solutions with ambiguity-float orbits. We find that ambiguity-fixed orbits lead to clearly better agreement among ionospheric-free ambiguity fractional parts in case of the large network, that is 80.5% of fractional parts fall in ± 0.15 cycles in contrast to 74.6% for the ambiguity-float orbits. We conclude that highly efficient GLONASS ionospheric-free PPP-AR is achievable in case of a few hours of data when GPS PPP-AR is also accomplished, and ambiguity-fixed GLONASS orbits will contribute significantly to PPP-AR over wide areas.     

Multi-GNSS precise point positioning (MGPPP) using raw observations

A joint-processing model for multi-GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, BDS and GALILEO) precise point positioning (PPP) is proposed, in which raw code and phase observations are used. In the proposed model, inter-system biases (ISBs) and GLONASS code inter-frequency biases (IFBs) are carefully considered, among which GLONASS code IFBs are modeled as a linear function of frequency numbers. To get the full rank function model, the unknowns are re-parameterized and the estimable slant ionospheric delays and ISBs/IFBs are derived and estimated simultaneously. One month of data in April, 2015 from 32 stations of the International GNSS Service (IGS) Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) tracking network have been used to validate the proposed model. Preliminary results show that RMS values of the positioning errors (with respect to external double-difference solutions) for static/kinematic solutions (four systems) are 6.2 mm/2.1 cm (north), 6.0 mm/2.2 cm (east) and 9.3 mm/4.9 cm (up). One-day stabilities of the estimated ISBs described by STD values are 0.36 and 0.38 ns, for GLONASS and BDS, respectively. Significant ISB jumps are identified between adjacent days for all stations, which are caused by the different satellite clock datums in different days and for different systems. Unlike ISBs, the estimated GLONASS code IFBs are quite stable for all stations, with an average STD of 0.04 ns over a month. Single-difference experiment of short baseline shows that PPP ionospheric delays are more precise than traditional leveling ionospheric delays.     

GNSS ambiguity resolution with controllable failure rate for long baseline network RTK

Many large-scale GNSS CORS networks have been deployed around the world to support various commercial and scientific applications. To make use of these networks for real-time kinematic positioning services, one of the major challenges is the ambiguity resolution (AR) over long inter-station baselines in the presence of considerable atmosphere biases. Usually, the widelane ambiguities are fixed first, followed by the procedure of determination of the narrowlane ambiguity integers based on the ionosphere-free model in which the widelane integers are introduced as known quantities. This paper seeks to improve the AR performance over long baseline through efficient procedures for improved float solutions and ambiguity fixing. The contribution is threefold: (1) instead of using the ionosphere-free measurements, the absolute and/or relative ionospheric constraints are introduced in the ionosphere-constrained model to enhance the model strength, thus resulting in the better float solutions; (2) the realistic widelane ambiguity precision is estimated by capturing the multipath effects due to the observation complexity, leading to improvement of reliability of widelane AR; (3) for the narrowlane AR, the partial AR for a subset of ambiguities selected according to the successively increased elevation is applied. For fixing the scalar ambiguity, an error probability controllable rounding method is proposed. The established ionosphere-constrained model can be efficiently solved based on the sequential Kalman filter. It can be either reduced to some special models simply by adjusting the variances of ionospheric constraints, or extended with more parameters and constraints. The presented methodology is tested over seven baselines of around 100 km from USA CORS network. The results show that the new widelane AR scheme can obtain the 99.4 % successful fixing rate with 0.6 % failure rate; while the new rounding method of narrowlane AR can obtain the fix rate of 89 % with failure rate of 0.8 %. In summary, the AR reliability can be efficiently improved with rigorous controllable probability of incorrectly fixed ambiguities.     

Homogeneous reprocessing of GPS,GLONASS and SLR observations

The International GNSS Service (IGS) provides operational products for the GPS and GLONASS constellation. Homogeneously processed time series of parameters from the IGS are only available for GPS. Reprocessed GLONASS series are provided only by individual Analysis Centers (i. e. CODE and ESA), making it difficult to fully include the GLONASS system into a rigorous GNSS analysis. In view of the increasing number of active GLONASS satellites and a steadily growing number of GPS+GLONASS-tracking stations available over the past few years, Technische Universität Dresden, Technische Universität München, Universität Bern and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich performed a combined reprocessing of GPS and GLONASS observations. Also, SLR observations to GPS and GLONASS are included in this reprocessing effort. Here, we show only SLR results from a GNSS orbit validation. In total, 18 years of data (1994–2011) have been processed from altogether 340 GNSS and 70 SLR stations. The use of GLONASS observations in addition to GPS has no impact on the estimated linear terrestrial reference frame parameters. However, daily station positions show an RMS reduction of 0.3 mm on average for the height component when additional GLONASS observations can be used for the time series determination. Analyzing satellite orbit overlaps, the rigorous combination of GPS and GLONASS neither improves nor degrades the GPS orbit precision. For GLONASS, however, the quality of the microwave-derived GLONASS orbits improves due to the combination. These findings are confirmed using independent SLR observations for a GNSS orbit validation. In comparison to previous studies, mean SLR biases for satellites GPS-35 and GPS-36 could be reduced in magnitude from \(-35\) and \(-38\)  mm to \(-12\) and \(-13\)  mm, respectively. Our results show that remaining SLR biases depend on the satellite type and the use of coated or uncoated retro-reflectors. For Earth rotation parameters, the increasing number of GLONASS satellites and tracking stations over the past few years leads to differences between GPS-only and GPS+GLONASS combined solutions which are most pronounced in the pole rate estimates with maximum 0.2 mas/day in magnitude. At the same time, the difference between GLONASS-only and combined solutions decreases. Derived GNSS orbits are used to estimate combined GPS+GLONASS satellite clocks, with first results presented in this paper. Phase observation residuals from a precise point positioning are at the level of 2 mm and particularly reveal poorly modeled yaw maneuver periods.     

Integrating GPS and GLONASS to accelerate convergence and initialization times of precise point positioning

The main challenge of dual-frequency precise point positioning (PPP) is that it requires about 30 min to obtain centimeter-level accuracy or to succeed in the first ambiguity-fixing. Currently, PPP is generally conducted with GPS only using the ionosphere-free combination. We adopt a single-differenced (SD) between-satellite PPP model to combine the GPS and GLONASS raw dual-frequency carrier phase measurements, in which the GPS satellite with the highest elevation is selected as the reference satellite to form the SD between-satellite measurements. We use a 7-day data set from 178 IGS stations to investigate the contribution of GLONASS observations to both ambiguity-float and ambiguity-fixed SD PPP solutions, in both kinematic and static modes. In ambiguity-fixed PPP, we only attempt to fix GPS integer ambiguities, leaving GLONASS ambiguities as float values. Numerous experimental results show that PPP with GLONASS and GPS requires much less convergence time than that of PPP with GPS alone. For ambiguity-float PPP, the average convergence time can be reduced by 45.9 % from 22.9 to 12.4 min in static mode and by 57.9 % from 40.6 to 17.7 min in kinematic mode, respectively. For ambiguity-fixed PPP, the average time to the first-fixed solution can be reduced by 27.4 % from 21.6 to 15.7 min in static mode and by 42.0 % from 34.4 to 20.0 min in kinematic mode, respectively. Experimental results also show that the less the GPS satellites are used in float PPP, the more significant is the reduction in convergence time when adding GLONASS observations. In addition, on average, more than 4 GLONASS satellites can be observed for most 2-h observation sessions. Nearly, the same improvement in convergence time reduction is achieved for those observations.     

Multi-GNSS phase delay estimation and PPP ambiguity resolution: GPS,BDS, GLONASS,Galileo

This paper focuses on the precise point positioning (PPP) ambiguity resolution (AR) using the observations acquired from four systems: GPS, BDS, GLONASS, and Galileo (GCRE). A GCRE four-system uncalibrated phase delay (UPD) estimation model and multi-GNSS undifferenced PPP AR method were developed in order to utilize the observations from all systems. For UPD estimation, the GCRE-combined PPP solutions of the globally distributed MGEX and IGS stations are performed to obtain four-system float ambiguities and then UPDs of GCRE satellites can be precisely estimated from these ambiguities. The quality of UPD products in terms of temporal stability and residual distributions is investigated for GPS, BDS, GLONASS, and Galileo satellites, respectively. The BDS satellite-induced code biases were corrected for GEO, IGSO, and MEO satellites before the UPD estimation. The UPD results of global and regional networks were also evaluated for Galileo and BDS, respectively. As a result of the frequency-division multiple-access strategy of GLONASS, the UPD estimation was performed using a network of homogeneous receivers including three commonly used GNSS receivers (TRIMBLE NETR9, JAVAD TRE_G3TH DELTA, and LEICA). Data recorded from 140 MGEX and IGS stations for a 30-day period in January in 2017 were used to validate the proposed GCRE UPD estimation and multi-GNSS dual-frequency PPP AR. Our results show that GCRE four-system PPP AR enables the fastest time to first fix (TTFF) solutions and the highest accuracy for all three coordinate components compared to the single and dual system. An average TTFF of 9.21 min with \(7{^{\circ }}\) cutoff elevation angle can be achieved for GCRE PPP AR, which is much shorter than that of GPS (18.07 min), GR (12.10 min), GE (15.36 min) and GC (13.21 min). With observations length of 10 min, the positioning accuracy of the GCRE fixed solution is 1.84, 1.11, and 1.53 cm, while the GPS-only result is 2.25, 1.29, and 9.73 cm for the east, north, and vertical components, respectively. When the cutoff elevation angle is increased to \(30{^{\circ }}\), the GPS-only PPP AR results are very unreliable, while 13.44 min of TTFF is still achievable for GCRE four-system solutions.     

Assessment of PPP integer ambiguity resolution using GPS,GLONASS and BeiDou (IGSO,MEO) constellations

Although integer ambiguity resolution (IAR) can improve positioning accuracy considerably and shorten the convergence time of precise point positioning (PPP), it requires an initialization time of over 30 min. With the full operation of GLONASS globally and BDS in the Asia–Pacific region, it is necessary to assess the PPP–IAR performance by simultaneous fixing of GPS, GLONASS, and BDS ambiguities. This study proposed a GPS + GLONASS + BDS combined PPP–IAR strategy and processed PPP–IAR kinematically and statically using one week of data collected at 20 static stations. The undifferenced wide- and narrow-lane fractional cycle biases for GPS, GLONASS, and BDS were estimated using a regional network, and undifferenced PPP ambiguity resolution was performed to assess the contribution of multi-GNSSs. Generally, over 99% of a posteriori residuals of wide-lane ambiguities were within ±0.25 cycles for both GPS and BDS, while the value was 91.5% for GLONASS. Over 96% of narrow-lane residuals were within ±0.15 cycles for GPS, GLONASS, and BDS. For kinematic PPP with a 10-min observation time, only 16.2% of all cases could be fixed with GPS alone. However, adding GLONASS improved the percentage considerably to 75.9%, and it reached 90.0% when using GPS + GLONASS + BDS. Not all epochs could be fixed with a correct set of ambiguities; therefore, we defined the ratio of the number of epochs with correctly fixed ambiguities to the number of all fixed epochs as the correct fixing rate (CFR). Because partial ambiguity fixing was used, when more than five ambiguities were fixed correctly, we considered the epoch correctly fixed. For the small ratio criteria of 2.0, the CFR improved considerably from 51.7% for GPS alone, to 98.3% when using GPS + GLONASS + BDS combined solutions.     

GPS satellite clock determination in case of inter-frequency clock biases for triple-frequency precise point positioning

Significant time-varying inter-frequency clock biases (IFCBs) within GPS observations prevent the application of the legacy L1/L2 ionosphere-free clock products on L5 signals. Conventional approaches overcoming this problem are to estimate L1/L5 ionosphere-free clocks in addition to their L1/L2 counterparts or to compute IFCBs between the L1/L2 and L1/L5 clocks which are later modeled through a harmonic analysis. In contrast, we start from the undifferenced uncombined GNSS model and propose an alternative approach where a second satellite clock parameter dedicated to the L5 signals is estimated along with the legacy L1/L2 clock. In this manner, we do not need to rely on the correlated L1/L2 and L1/L5 ionosphere-free observables which complicates triple-frequency GPS stochastic models, or account for the unfavorable time-varying hardware biases in undifferenced GPS functional models since they can be absorbed by the L5 clocks. An extra advantage over the ionosphere-free model is that external ionosphere constraints can potentially be introduced to improve PPP. With 27 days of triple-frequency GPS data from globally distributed stations, we find that the RMS of the positioning differences between our GPS model and all conventional models is below 1 mm for all east, north and up components, demonstrating the effectiveness of our model in addressing triple-frequency observations and time-varying IFCBs. Moreover, we can combine the L1/L2 and L5 clocks derived from our model to calculate precisely the L1/L5 clocks which in practice only depart from their legacy counterparts by less than 0.006 ns in RMS. Our triple-frequency GPS model proves convenient and efficient in combating time-varying IFCBs and can be generalized to more than three frequency signals for satellite clock determination.     

Simultaneous estimation of GLONASS pseudorange inter-frequency biases in precise point positioning using undifferenced and uncombined observations

GLONASS precise point positioning (PPP) performance is affected by the inter-frequency biases (IFBs) due to the application of frequency division multiple access technique. In this contribution, the impact of GLONASS pseudorange IFBs on convergence performance and positioning accuracy of GLONASS-only and GPS + GLONASS PPP based on undifferenced and uncombined observation models is investigated. Through a re-parameterization process, the following four pseudorange IFB handling schemes were proposed: neglecting IFBs, modeling IFBs as a linear or quadratic polynomial function of frequency number, and estimating IFBs for each GLONASS satellite. One week of GNSS observation data from 132 International GNSS Service stations was selected to investigate the contribution of simultaneous estimation of GLONASS pseudorange IFBs on GLONASS-only and combined GPS + GLONASS PPP in both static and kinematic modes. The results show that considering IFBs can speed up the convergence of PPP using GLONASS observations by more than 20%. Apart from GLONASS-only kinematic PPP, the positioning accuracy of GLONASS-only and GPS + GLONASS PPP is comparable among the four schemes. Overall, the scheme of estimating IFBs for each GLONASS satellite outperforms the other schemes in both convergence time reduction and positioning accuracy improvement, which indicates that the GLONASS IFBs may not strictly obey a linear or quadratic function relationship with the frequency number.     

Estimation and evaluation of real-time precipitable water vapor from GLONASS and GPS

The revitalized Russian GLONASS system provides new potential for real-time retrieval of zenith tropospheric delays (ZTD) and precipitable water vapor (PWV) in order to support time-critical meteorological applications such as nowcasting or severe weather event monitoring. In this study, we develop a method of real-time ZTD/PWV retrieval based on GLONASS and/or GPS observations. The performance of ZTD and PWV derived from GLONASS data using real-time precise point positioning (PPP) technique is carefully investigated and evaluated. The potential of combining GLONASS and GPS data for ZTD/PWV retrieving is assessed as well. The GLONASS and GPS observations of about half a year for 80 globally distributed stations from the IGS (International GNSS Service) network are processed. The results show that the real-time GLONASS ZTD series agree quite well with the GPS ZTD series in general: the RMS of ZTD differences is about 8 mm (about 1.2 mm in PWV). Furthermore, for an inter-technique validation, the real-time ZTD estimated from GLONASS-only, GPS-only, and the GPS/GLONASS combined solutions are compared with those derived from very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) at colocated GNSS/VLBI stations. The comparison shows that GLONASS can contribute to real-time meteorological applications, with almost the same accuracy as GPS. More accurate and reliable water vapor values, about 1.5–2.3 mm in PWV, can be achieved when GLONASS observations are combined with the GPS ones in the real-time PPP data processing. The comparison with radiosonde data further confirms the performance of GLONASS-derived real-time PWV and the benefit of adding GLONASS to stand-alone GPS processing.     

利用UofC消电离层组合的GPS/GLONASS精密单点定位研究

利用码和载波相位观测值半和线性组合可以消除电离层一阶误差的特性,讨论了基于UofC消电离层组合的GPS/GLONASS精密单点定位的数学模型。UofC模型对两个频率上的模糊度参数分别进行估计,为进一步获得模糊度参数的整数解提供了便利。利用IGS跟踪站的GPS/GLONASS观测数据对UofC模型和传统的在两个频率码观测值间进行消电离层组合的模型进行了比较,统计结果表明,UofC模型与传统模型相比在平面位置定位精度上略有提高,但总体上差别不大。     

GLONASS phase bias estimation and its PPP ambiguity resolution using homogeneous receivers

Integer ambiguity resolution (IAR) appreciably improves the position accuracy and shortens the convergence time of precise point positioning (PPP). However, while many studies are limited to GPS, there is a need to investigate the performance of GLONASS PPP ambiguity resolution. Unfortunately, because of the frequency-division multiple-access strategy of GLONASS, GLONASS PPP IAR faces two obstacles. First, simultaneously observed satellites operate at different wavelengths. Second and most importantly, distinct inter-frequency bias (IFB) exists between different satellites. For the former, we adopt an undifferenced method for uncalibrated phase delay (UPD) estimation and proposed an undifferenced PPP IAR strategy. We select a set of homogeneous receivers with identical receiver IFB to perform UPD estimation and PPP IAR. The code and carrier phase IFBs can be absorbed by satellite wide-lane and narrow-lane UPDs, respectively, which is in turn consistent with PPP IAR using the same type of receivers. In order to verify the method, we used 50 stations to generate satellite UPDs and another 12 stations selected as users to perform PPP IAR. We found that the GLONASS satellite UPDs are stable in time and space and can be estimated with high accuracy and reliability. After applying UPD correction, 91 % of wide-lane ambiguities and 99 % of narrow-lane ambiguities are within (?0.15, +0.15) cycles of the nearest integer. After ambiguity resolution, the 2-hour static PPP accuracy improves from (0.66, 1.42, 1.55) cm to (0.38, 0.39, 1.39) cm for the north, east, and up components, respectively.     

PPP网解UPD模糊度固定的无基站差分大型CORS站整网快速精密解算

本文利用“国家基准一期工程”和上千全国部分省市CORS站的GNSS观测资料,基于PPP网解UPD模糊度固定技术实现了区域内无基站差分毫米级定位以及上千全国CORS站整网一次快速精密解算,这对于保障国家应急测绘快速响应、实现灾区基准快速建立以及快速获取和恢复国家统一坐标框架基准站坐标等具有重要的实用价值意义。首先,选取2015年8月1—31日198个国家GNSS连续运行基准站计算卫星端的宽巷、窄巷UPD,采用PPP网解UPD模糊度固定技术,对这些GNSS测站的载波相位进行模糊度固定:宽巷模糊度31 d固定率平均值在80%以上的测站共有193个;窄巷模糊度31 d固定率平均值在60%以上的测站共有165个。其次,对PPP整网一次快速解算定位结果进行统计分析,结果表明:31 d整网解算在NEU 3个方向的RMS分别为2.8、3.9、5.3 mm;标准差分别为2.1、3.2、6.7 mm。再者,使用中国区域内5个IGS观测站进行无基站差分精密定位,与SOPAC单天解ITRF2008框架下历元坐标的对比分析表明,31 d单日解外符合精度水平及高程方向均相差在毫米量级。最后,利用上述GNSS基准站解算出来的卫星端的宽、窄巷UPD(31 d),依次对2015年8月1—31日全国及部分省市1195个CORS站观测数据进行载波相位模糊度固定,得到无模糊度的精确相位观测值,从而使法方程中待估模糊度参数减少,克服了基准站网规模和测站个数的限制,实现了上千CORS站整网一次快速解算,对31 d月平均解与国际知名软件GAMIT/GLOBK的双差月解结果(2015年国家基础测绘任务成果)进行比较,结果显示,NEU 3个方向上差异在1 cm以内的测站分别为99.92%、99.33%、79.83%,其中U方向相差在1.5 cm为93.22%。综上所述,PPP网解UPD模糊度固定技术的方法,确保了区域内无基站精密定位、大网快速解算的精度和效率,能够满足灾区及国家坐标框架基准站坐标快速解算与恢复的迫切需求。     

A two-step ionospheric modeling algorithm considering the impact of GLONASS pseudo-range inter-channel biases

The Global Navigation Satellite System presents a plausible and cost-effective way of computing the total electron content (TEC). But TEC estimated value could be seriously affected by the differential code biases (DCB) of frequency-dependent satellites and receivers. Unlike GPS and other satellite systems, GLONASS adopts a frequency-division multiplexing access mode to distinguish different satellites. This strategy leads to different wavelengths and inter-frequency biases (IFBs) for both pseudo-range and carrier phase observations, whose impacts are rarely considered in ionospheric modeling. We obtained observations from four groups of co-stations to analyze the characteristics of the GLONASS receiver P1P2 pseudo-range IFB with a double-difference method. The results showed that the GLONASS P1P2 pseudo-range IFB remained stable for a period of time and could catch up to several meters, which cannot be absorbed by the receiver DCB during ionospheric modeling. Given the characteristics of the GLONASS P1P2 pseudo-range IFB, we proposed a two-step ionosphere modeling method with the priori IFB information. The experimental analysis showed that the new algorithm can effectively eliminate the adverse effects on ionospheric model and hardware delay parameters estimation in different space environments. During high solar activity period, compared to the traditional GPS + GLONASS modeling algorithm, the absolute average deviation of TEC decreased from 2.17 to 2.07 TECu (TEC unit); simultaneously, the average RMS of GPS satellite DCB decreased from 0.225 to 0.219 ns, and the average deviation of GLONASS satellite DCB decreased from 0.253 to 0.113 ns with a great improvement in over 55%.     

Combination of GNSS and SLR observations using satellite co-locations

Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) observations to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellites may be used for several purposes. On one hand, the range measurement may be used as an independent validation for satellite orbits derived solely from GNSS microwave observations. On the other hand, both observation types may be analyzed together to generate a combined orbit. The latter procedure implies that one common set of orbit parameters is estimated from GNSS and SLR data. We performed such a combined processing of GNSS and SLR using the data of the year 2008. During this period, two GPS and four GLONASS satellites could be used as satellite co-locations. We focus on the general procedure for this type of combined processing and the impact on the terrestrial reference frame (including scale and geocenter), the GNSS satellite antenna offsets (SAO) and the SLR range biases. We show that the combination using only satellite co-locations as connection between GNSS and SLR is possible and allows the estimation of SLR station coordinates at the level of 1–2 cm. The SLR observations to GNSS satellites provide the scale allowing the estimation of GNSS SAO without relying on the scale of any a priori terrestrial reference frame. We show that the necessity to estimate SLR range biases does not prohibit the estimation of GNSS SAO. A good distribution of SLR observations allows a common estimation of the two parameter types. The estimated corrections for the GNSS SAO are 119 mm and −13 mm on average for the GPS and GLONASS satellites, respectively. The resulting SLR range biases suggest that it might be sufficient to estimate one parameter per station representing a range bias common to all GNSS satellites. The estimated biases are in the range of a few centimeters up to 5 cm. Scale differences of 0.9 ppb are seen between GNSS and SLR.     

URTK: undifferenced network RTK positioning

Standard network RTK has been widely used since it was proposed in the mid-1990s. Rovers can obtain high-precision estimates of position by resolving double-differenced (DD) ambiguities. The focus of this study is a new undifferenced network RTK method, abbreviated as URTK hereafter, based on undifferenced (UD) observation corrections whose single-differenced (SD) ambiguities between satellites can be resolved in several seconds. The tools for studying the real-time realization of the new method are our developments of logical schemes that have the capability for the real-time modeling of a reference network and the instantaneous resolution of SD ionosphere-free (IF) ambiguities at a single station. This research demonstrates the validity of modeling regional UD-unmodeled errors on the ground and examines the maximum differences when compared to modeling the errors using ionospheric pierce points (IPP). With data collected at 48 stations from a CORS network in Shanxi Province (SXCORS) in China through May 21, 2010, the efficiency of the presented real-time strategies is validated using IGS final products in a postprocessing mode. The results verify that more than 83 % of SD wide-lane (WL) ambiguity can be fixed with 5 s of observation data, and the average resolution time of all the WL tests is 4.96 s. More than 80 % of SD L1 ambiguity can be fixed within 5 s, and the average resolution time is only 6.66 s. Rovers could gain rapidly centimeter-level absolute positioning service, comparable to standard network RTK. In addition, the URTK method transforms the fixed DD-ambiguities of the reference network into UD-ambiguities, and it does not need to set the base station and base satellite. Since the UD-corrections are modeled for each common visible satellite, it breaks down the connections between stations and satellites of the DD-corrections in the current network RTK. The UD-corrections can be broadcast by the base station and automatically selected and optimized by a rover during the real-time kinematic processing, thus avoiding ambiguity in reinitialization due to the change of reference, so it should be very flexible and useful for a wide range of applications.     

一种基于星间单差模糊度固定的载波伪距生成方法

随着测站和卫星数量的不断增加,大规模GNSS网的数据处理面临越来越大的挑战。将载波相位观测量转化为载波伪距是提高大规模GNSS网数据处理效率的有效方法。本文提出在精密单点定位基础上进行星间单差模糊度固定生成载波伪距的方法。采用中国大陆构造环境监测网络（陆态网）观测数据进行了验证。结果表明,对于包含252个测站的观测网,采用载波伪距进行整网解的处理时间不超过20 min。剔除异常测站后,240个陆态网测站的月坐标重复精度在N、E和U方向的均值分别为0.74、0.85和2.53 mm,略优于原始数据整网解的结果。本文还探讨了采用原始数据和载波伪距进行整网解的关系,利用带约束条件的观测模型对不同方法生成的载波伪距应用于整网解的原理进行统一解释,并指出了载波伪距整网解与原始数据整网解的理论等效性。     

偏航姿态对GPS和GLONASS精密轨道和钟差的影响

利用全球约110个国际GNSS服务（International GNSS Service,IGS）测站2013年全年观测数据,分析和研究了GPS和全球卫星导航系统（global navigation satellite system,GLONASS）卫星偏航姿态对其精密轨道和钟差的影响。结果表明,偏航姿态对不同型号GPS卫星轨道和钟差的影响程度不同,当采用偏航姿态改正后地影期的BLOCK ⅡA型卫星轨道改善可达17 mm,BLOCK ⅡF为近5 mm,而BLOCK ⅡR几乎不受影响。由于偏航姿态对GLONASS-M卫星定轨精度影响较大,因此,当改正偏航姿态后所有GLONASS卫星相对于IGS最终轨道平均一维差异提高10 mm,相对于德国地学中心（German Research Center for Geosciences,GFZ）最终钟差平均标准差提升0.034 ns。     

Triple-frequency GPS precise point positioning with rapid ambiguity resolution

At present, reliable ambiguity resolution in real-time GPS precise point positioning (PPP) can only be achieved after an initial observation period of a few tens of minutes. In this study, we propose a method where the incoming triple-frequency GPS signals are exploited to enable rapid convergences to ambiguity-fixed solutions in real-time PPP. Specifically, extra-wide-lane ambiguity resolution can be first achieved almost instantaneously with the Melbourne-Wübbena combination observable on L2 and L5. Then the resultant unambiguous extra-wide-lane carrier-phase is combined with the wide-lane carrier-phase on L1 and L2 to form an ionosphere-free observable with a wavelength of about 3.4 m. Although the noise of this observable is around 100 times the raw carrier-phase noise, its wide-lane ambiguity can still be resolved very efficiently, and the resultant ambiguity-fixed observable can assist much better than pseudorange in speeding up succeeding narrow-lane ambiguity resolution. To validate this method, we use an advanced hardware simulator to generate triple-frequency signals and a high-grade receiver to collect 1-Hz data. When the carrier-phase precisions on L1, L2 and L5 are as poor as 1.5, 6.3 and 1.5 mm, respectively, wide-lane ambiguity resolution can still reach a correctness rate of over 99 % within 20 s. As a result, the correctness rate of narrow-lane ambiguity resolution achieves 99 % within 65 s, in contrast to only 64 % within 150 s in dual-frequency PPP. In addition, we also simulate a multipath-contaminated data set and introduce new ambiguities for all satellites every 120 s. We find that when multipath effects are strong, ambiguity-fixed solutions are achieved at 78 % of all epochs in triple-frequency PPP whilst almost no ambiguities are resolved in dual-frequency PPP. Therefore, we demonstrate that triple-frequency PPP has the potential to achieve ambiguity-fixed solutions within a few minutes, or even shorter if raw carrier-phase precisions are around 1 mm. In either case, we conclude that the efficiency of ambiguity resolution in triple-frequency PPP is much higher than that in dual-frequency PPP.     

Assessment of local GNSS baselines at co-location sites

As one of the major contributors to the realisation of the International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS), the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are prone to suffer from irregularities and discontinuities in time series. While often associated with hardware/software changes and the influence of the local environment, these discrepancies constitute a major threat for ITRS realisations. Co-located GNSS at fundamental sites, with two or more available instruments, provide the opportunity to mitigate their influence while improving the accuracy of estimated positions by examining data breaks, local biases, deformations, time-dependent variations and the comparison of GNSS baselines with existing local tie measurements. With the use of co-located GNSS data from a subset sites of the International GNSS Service network, this paper discusses a global multi-year analysis with the aim of delivering homogeneous time series of coordinates to analyse system-specific error sources in the local baselines. Results based on the comparison of different GNSS-based solutions with the local survey ties show discrepancies of up to 10 mm despite GNSS coordinate repeatabilities at the sub-mm level. The discrepancies are especially large for the solutions using the ionosphere-free linear combination and estimating tropospheric zenith delays, thus corresponding to the processing strategy used for global solutions. Snow on the antennas causes further problems and seasonal variations of the station coordinates. These demonstrate the need for a permanent high-quality monitoring of the effects present in the short GNSS baselines at fundamental sites.