AP-8 trapped proton environment for solar maximum and solar minimum. [Computer accessible models

The successful launch of five new-generation experimental satellites of the China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, namely BeiDou I1-S, I2-S, M1-S, M2-S, and M3-S, marks a significant step in expanding BeiDou into a navigation system with global coverage. In addition to B1I (1561.098 MHz) and B3I (1269.520 MHz) signals, the new-generation BeiDou-3 experimental satellites are also capable of transmitting several new navigation signals in space, namely B1C at 1575.42 MHz, B2a at 1176.45 MHz, and B2b at 1207.14 MHz. For the first time, we present an initial characterization and performance assessment for these new-generation BeiDou-3 satellites and their signals. The L1/L2/L5 signals from GPS Block IIF satellites, E1/E5a/E5b signals from Galileo satellites, and B1I/B2I/B3I signals from BeiDou-2 satellites are also evaluated for comparison. The characteristics of the B1C, B1I, B2a, B2b, and B3I signals are evaluated in terms of observed carrier-to-noise density ratio, pseudorange multipath and noise, triple-frequency carrier-phase ionosphere-free and geometry-free combination, and double-differenced carrier-phase and code residuals. The results demonstrate that the observational quality of the new-generation BeiDou-3 signals is comparable to that of GPS L1/L2/L5 and Galileo E1/E5a/E5b signals. However, the analysis of code multipath shows that the elevation-dependent code biases, which have been previously identified to exist in the code observations of the BeiDou-2 satellites, seem to be not obvious for all the available signals of the new-generation BeiDou-3 satellites. This will significantly benefit precise applications that resolve wide-lane ambiguity based on Hatch–Melbourne–Wubbena linear combinations and other applications such as single-frequency precise point positioning (PPP) based on the ionosphere-free code–carrier combinations. Furthermore, with regard to the triple-frequency carrier-phase ionosphere-free and geometry-free combination, it is found that different from the BeiDou-2 and GPS Block IIF satellites, no apparent bias variations could be observed in all the new-generation BeiDou-3 experimental satellites, which shows a good consistency of the new-generation BeiDou-3 signals. The absence of such triple-frequency biases simplifies the potential processing of multi-frequency PPP using observations from the new-generation BeiDou-3 satellites. Finally, the precise relative positioning results indicate that the additional observations from the new-generation BeiDou-3 satellites can improve ambiguity resolution performance with respect to BeiDou-2 only positioning, which indicates that observations from the new-generation BeiDou-3 satellites can contribute to precise relative positioning.

Initial assessment of the COMPASS/BeiDou-3: new-generation navigation signals

Nowadays, China BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) has been developed well and provided global services with highly precise positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) as well as unique short-message communication, particularly global system (BDS-3) with higher precision multi-frequency signals. The precise point positioning (PPP) can provide the precise position, receiver clock, and zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD) with a stand-alone receiver compared to the traditional double differenced relative positioning mode, which has been widely used in PNT, geodesy, meteorology and so on. However, it has a lot of challenges for multi-frequency BDS PPP with different strategies and more unknown parameters. In this paper, the detailed PPP models using the single-, dual-, triple-, and quad-frequency BDS observations are presented and evaluated. Firstly, BDS system and PPP method are introduced. Secondly, the stochastic models of time delay bias in BDS-2/BDS-3 PPP including the neglection, random constant, random walk and white noise are presented. Then, three single-frequency, four dual-frequency, four triple-frequency and four quad-frequency BDS PPP models are provided. Finally, the BDS PPP models progress and performances including theoretical comparison of the models, positioning performances, precise time and frequency transfer, ZTD, inter-frequency bias (IFB) and differential code bias (DCB) are presented and evaluated as well as future challenges. The results show that the multi-frequency BDS observations will greatly improve the PPP performances.

/pdf/ppp-models-and-performances-from-single-to-quad-frequency-4nmhyjv301.pdf

PPP models and performances from single- to quad-frequency BDS observations

All BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) satellites are transmitting signals on three frequencies, which brings new opportunity and challenges for high-accuracy precise point positioning (PPP) with ambiguity resolution (AR). This paper proposes an effective uncalibrated phase delay (UPD) estimation and AR strategy which is based on a raw PPP model. First, triple-frequency raw PPP models are developed. The observation model and stochastic model are designed and extended to accommodate the third frequency. Then, the UPD is parameterized in raw frequency form while estimating with the high-precision and low-noise integer linear combination of float ambiguity which are derived by ambiguity decorrelation. Third, with UPD corrected, the LAMBDA method is used for resolving full or partial ambiguities which can be fixed. This method can be easily and flexibly extended for dual-, triple- or even more frequency. To verify the effectiveness and performance of triple-frequency PPP AR, tests with real BDS data from 90 stations lasting for 21 days were performed in static mode. Data were processed with three strategies: BDS triple-frequency ambiguity-float PPP, BDS triple-frequency PPP with dual-frequency (B1/B2) and three-frequency AR, respectively. Numerous experiment results showed that compared with the ambiguity-float solution, the performance in terms of convergence time and positioning biases can be significantly improved by AR. Among three groups of solutions, the triple-frequency PPP AR achieved the best performance. Compared with dual-frequency AR, additional the third frequency could apparently improve the position estimations during the initialization phase and under constraint environments when the dual-frequency PPP AR is limited by few satellite numbers.

/pdf/three-frequency-bds-precise-point-positioning-ambiguity-5ach5l8all.pdf

Three-frequency BDS precise point positioning ambiguity resolution based on raw observables

Mega-constellation networks (MCNs) based on low earth orbit (LEO) satellites have become increasingly important with many projects in the design or implementation phase. For those MCN systems with inter-satellite links (ISLs), the large number of satellites increases the routing complexity and the required hop-count of ISL paths. This paper aims to provide insights into the topology and routing design in MCNs through the analysis of ISL paths. We propose a theoretical model to explicitly estimate the ISL hop-count between ground users in MCNs with inclined orbits. The spatial distribution properties of hop-count are derived based on the proposed method. Based on an exemplary constellation, that is Starlink, the global distribution patterns of hop-count and the path difference caused by different access satellites are illustrated for the first time. In Starlink, the difference of the paths from different starting satellites can be up to 45 hops. The numerical results show that optimizing the constellation phasing factor can effectively reduce the average hop-count, for both the whole network and specific regional users.

Analysis of Inter-Satellite Link Paths for LEO Mega-Constellation Networks

The latest generation of GPS satellites, termed Block IIF, provides a new L5 signal. Multi-frequency signals open new prospects for precise positioning and fast ambiguity resolution and have become the trend in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) development. However, a new type of inter-frequency clock bias (IFCB), i.e., the difference between the current clock products computed with L1/L2 and the satellite clocks computed with L1/L5, was noticed. Consequently, the L1/L2 clock products cannot be used for L1/L5 precise point positioning (PPP). In order to solve this issue, the IFCB should be estimated with a high accuracy. Datasets collected at 129 globally distributed Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations from 2015 are employed to investigate the IFCB. The results indicate that the IFCB is satellite dependent and varies with the relative sun---spacecraft---earth geometry. Other factors, however, may also contribute to the IFCB variations according to the harmonic analysis of the single-day IFCB time series. In addition, the results show that the IFCB exhibits periodic signal with a notable period of 43,080 s and the peak-to-peak amplitude is 0.023---0.269 m. After considering a time lag of 240 s, the average cross-correlation coefficient between the IFCB series of two consecutive days is 0.943, and the prediction accuracy of IFCB is 0.006 m. A triple-frequency PPP model that takes the IFCB into account is proposed. When using 3-h datasets, the positioning accuracy of triple-frequency PPP can be improved by 19, 13 and 21 % compared with the L1/L2-based PPP in the east, north and up directions, respectively.

Characteristics of inter-frequency clock bias for Block IIF satellites and its effect on triple-frequency GPS precise point positioning

Satellite availability and point positioning accuracy evaluation on a global scale for integration of GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo

In view that most Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) users are still using single-frequency receivers due to the low costs, single-frequency Precise Point Positioning (PPP) has been attracting increasing attention in the GNSS community. For a long period, single-frequency PPP technology has mainly relied on the Global Positioning System (GPS). With the recent revitalisation of the Russian GLONASS constellation and two newly emerging constellations, BeiDou and Galileo, it is now feasible to investigate the performance of Four-Constellation integrated Single-Frequency PPP (FCSF-PPP) with GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo measurements. In this study, a FCSF-PPP model is presented to simultaneously process observations from all four GNSS constellations. Datasets collected at 47 globally distributed four-system Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations on seven consecutive days and a kinematic experimental dataset are employed to fully assess the performance of FCSF-PPP. The FCSF-PPP solutions are compared to GPS-only and combined GPS/GLONASS single-frequency PPP solutions. The results indicate that the positioning performance is significantly improved by integrating multi-constellation signals.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0373463316000771

Performance Evaluation of Single-frequency Precise Point Positioning with GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo

The time-varying biases within carrier phase observations will be integrated with satellite clock offset parameters in the precise clock estimation. The inconsistency among signal-dependent phase biases within a satellite results in the inadequacy of the current L1/L2 ionospheric-free (IF) satellite clock products for the GPS precise point positioning (PPP) involving L5 signal. The inter-frequency clock bias (IFCB) estimation approaches for triple-frequency PPP based on either uncombined (UC) observations or IF combined observations within a single arbitrary combination are proposed in this study. The key feature of the IFCB estimation approaches is that we only need to obtain a set of phase-specific IFCB (PIFCB) estimates between the L1/L5 and L1/L2 IF satellite clocks, and then, we can directly convert the obtained L1/L5 IF PIFCBs into L5 UC PIFCBs and L1/L2/L5 IF PIFCBs by multiplying individual constants. The mathematical conversion formula is rigorously derived. The UC and IF triple-frequency PPP models are developed. Datasets from 171 stations with a globally even distribution on seven consecutive days were adopted for analysis. After 24-h observation, the UC and IF triple-frequency PPP without PIFCB corrections can achieve an accuracy of 8, 6 and 13 mm, and 8, 5 and 13 mm in east, north and up coordinate components, respectively, while the corresponding positioning accuracy of the cases with PIFCB consideration can be improved by 38, 33 and 31%, and 50, 40 and 23% to 5, 4 and 9 mm, and 4, 3 and 10 mm in the three components, respectively. The corresponding improvement in convergence time is 17, 1 and 22% in the three components in UC model, respectively. Moreover, the phase observation residuals on L5 frequency in UC triple-frequency PPP and of L1/L2/L5 IF combination in IF triple-frequency PPP are reduced by about 4 mm after applying PIFCB corrections. The performance improvement in UC triple-frequency PPP over UC dual-frequency PPP is 7, 4 and 2% in terms of convergence time in the three components, respectively. The daily solutions of UC triple-frequency PPP have a comparable positioning accuracy to the UC dual-frequency PPP.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00190-018-1176-5.pdf

GPS inter-frequency clock bias estimation for both uncombined and ionospheric-free combined triple-frequency precise point positioning

The School of Geodesy and Geomatics (SGG) at Wuhan University has been generating GPS fractional cycle bias (FCB) products for users to realize ambiguity-fixed precise point positioning (PPP) since 2015. Along with the development of multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), there is an urgent need to provide multi-GNSS FCB products for the PPP ambiguity resolution (AR) with multi-constellation observations. This study focuses on the multi-GNSS FCB estimation, in which the FCB products of GPS, Galileo, BDS and QZSS are generated. We describe here the detailed estimation method and the significant improvements to the new service. The FCB quality, as well as the PPP AR performance, is evaluated. The mean standard deviations of wide-lane FCBs relative to CODE are 0.019, 0.005, 0.015 and 0.008 cycles, while those of narrow-lane are 0.021, 0.021, 0.057 and 0.010 cycles for GPS, Galileo, BDS and QZSS, respectively.
The comparison with CNES GPS and Galileo FCBs indicates their good consistency with the corresponding FCBs. Compared with GPS-only PPP AR, the convergence time and time to first fix of the four-system PPP AR can be reduced by 27.3 and 29.4% in the static mode, respectively, while the corresponding improvements are 42.6 and 51.9% in the kinematic mode, respectively. These results demonstrate that our SGG FCB service can provide high-precision and reliable four-system FCB corrections for worldwide users to conduct ambiguity-fixed PPP processing.

Lin Pan

Papers

Characteristics of inter-frequency clock bias for Block IIF satellites and its effect on triple-frequency GPS precise point positioning

Satellite availability and point positioning accuracy evaluation on a global scale for integration of GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo

Performance Evaluation of Single-frequency Precise Point Positioning with GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo

GPS inter-frequency clock bias estimation for both uncombined and ionospheric-free combined triple-frequency precise point positioning

Multi-GNSS fractional cycle bias products generation for GNSS ambiguity-fixed PPP at Wuhan University