Understanding the role of the ionospheric delay in single-point single-epoch GPS coordinates

The ionospheric delay is the main source of error for single-point single-epoch (SPSE) GPS positioning when using single-frequency receivers. In contrast to the common slant approach, in this article we focus on its effect in final coordinates through the study of bias propagation in SPSE positioning: we first show an analytical resolution for the propagation problem with highly symmetric satellite configurations. To overcome some of the disadvantages of this first method, we use Santerre’s technique and, finally, present a new numerical methodology that allows us to generalize for a real geometry and obtain an average ionospheric positioning error over a given site. From the results obtained, four working hypotheses that relate the ionospheric shape above the receiver with final position errors are presented and tested. These four hypotheses, which agree with average ionospheric positioning error in 95% of the studied cases, can be related to the construction of the design matrix. Finally, these hypotheses have been used to address a situation where the ionospheric delay is corrected with an ionospheric model.