Benefits of the third frequency signal on cycle slip correction

Cycle slip detection and correction are important issues when carrier phase observations are used in high-precision GNSS data processing and have, therefore, been intensively investigated. Along with the GNSS modernization, the cycle slip correction (CSC) problem has been raised to deal with more signals from multi-frequencies. We extend the geometry-based approach by integrating time-differenced pseudorange and carrier phase observations to estimate the integer number of triple-frequency cycle slips together with the receiver clock offset, ionospheric delay variations and receiver displacements. The Least-squares AMBiguity Decorrelation Adjustment method can be employed. The benefit of the third frequency observation on the cycle slip estimate is first investigated with simulation tests. The results show that adding the third frequency observation can significantly improve the model strength and that a reliable triple-frequency CSC with a theoretical success rate of higher than 99.9 % can still be achieved, even under the condition that the range or ionosphere delay variation is poorly defined. The performance of triple-frequency CSC is validated with real triple-frequency BDS data since all BDS satellites in orbit are transmitting triple-frequency signals. The results show that the fixing rate of CSC can reach 99.1 % in static precise point positioning (PPP) and 98.8 % in the kinematic case. PPP solutions with cycle slip-uncorrected and cycle slip-corrected data sets are compared to validate the correctness of triple-frequency CSC. The standard deviations of the PPP solution in east, north and vertical component, respectively, can be improved by 31.1, 30.7 and 37.6 % for static, and by 42.0, 53.8 and 39.7 % for kinematic after cycle slips are corrected. The performance of dual- and triple-frequency CSC is also compared. Results show that the performance of dual-frequency CSC is slightly worse than that of triple-frequency CSC. These results demonstrate that the performance of CSC can be significantly improved with triple-frequency observations.