A priori zenith wet delays in the analysis of VLBI CONT sessions

Tropospheric delay is one of the major sources of error in VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) analysis. The principal component of this error can be accurately computed through reliable surface pressure data —hydrostatic delay— yet there is also a small but volatile component —wet delay— which is difficult to be modelled a priori. In VLBI analysis, troposphere delay is typically modelled in the theoretical delays using Zenith Hydrostatic Delays (ZHD) and a dry mapping function. Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD) is not modelled but estimated in the analysis process. This work studies inter alia the impact of including external GNSS estimates to model a priori ZWD in VLBI analysis, as well as other models of a priori ZWD.In a first stage, two different sources of GNSS troposphere products are compared to VLBI troposphere estimates in a period of 5 years. The solution with the best agreement to VLBI results is injected in the VLBI analysis as a priori ZWD value and is compared to other options to model a priori ZWD. The dataset used for this empirical analysis consists of the six CONT campaigns.It has been found that modelling a priori ZWD has no significant impact either on baseline length and coordinates repeatabilities. Nevertheless, modelling a priori ZWD can change the magnitude of the estimated coordinates a few millimeters in the up component with respect to the non-modelling approach. In addition, the influence of a priori ZWD on Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) and troposphere estimates —Zenith Total Delays (ZTD) and gradients—has also been analysed, resulting in a small but significant impact on both geodetic products.     

Compatibility of Terrestrial Reference Frames used in GNSS broadcast messages during an 8 week period of 2019

The operational Terrestrial Reference Frames (TRFs) realized through the evaluation of broadcast ephemerides for GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou-2 and BeiDou-3 have been compared to IGS14, the TRF realized by the International GNSS Service (IGS). The TRFs realized by the GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou-2 and BeiDou-3 broadcast ephemerides are the orbital realizations of WGS 84 (G1762′), PZ90.11, GTRF19v01, and BDCS respectively. These TRFs are compared using up to 56 days of data (21 July-14 Sept 2019) at a 5 or 15-min rate. The operational TRFs are compared to IGS14 in a 7-parameter similarity (Helmert) transformation. Numerical results show that the operational GNSS TRFs differ from IGS14 at a level no greater than 4 cm for Galileo, 6 cm for GPS and BeiDou-3, 13 cm for GLONASS, and 48 cm for a limited set of BeiDou-2 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) vehicles.     

An unbiased carrier-phase anti-interference filter based on mirror frequency amplitude compensation

Anti-interference and high-precision measurement are two important indicators of the performance of a satellite navigation receiver. However, current receiver designs do not simultaneously satisfy these two criteria. While the carrier-phase ranging technique is necessary for high-precision receivers, frequency domain interference suppression (FDIS) results in tracking error biases for nonideal analog receiver channels. Importantly, as the FDIS filter is adaptive, the bias will vary with the jamming pattern, particularly when the frequency of interference varies. For precision navigation applications, this bias must be mitigated. Therefore, a new FDIS filter based on the mirror frequency amplitude compensation (MFAC) method is proposed in this paper. The amplitude at the symmetry position of the notch frequency is doubled in the MFAC method to mitigate this carrier-phase bias. The simulation results showed that the MFAC method can reduce the range of the carrier-phase bias by more than 60% for different interference bandwidths, which substantially exceeds that achieved using the conventional FDIS and calibration filter methods of 20 orders.     

基于放电室均布模型的射频离子推力器研究

为了研究工作参数和结构参数对射频离子推力器放电性能的影响规律，通过开展放电室均布模型数值仿真和推力器性能试验，研究了射频离子推力器LRIT 40的放电机理和放电性能随结构参数和工作参数的变化规律。研究发现，减小长径比或增大工质流率、栅极电压及射频功率均能增大推力器束电流，改善推力器性能。通过分析试验结果和仿真结果得到，放电室均布模型可用于研究射频离子推力器的性能。     

新型遥测网系统RF链路管理技术

传统的遥测体制已经不能满足日益增长的飞行试验需求,新型TmNS(Telemetry Network System,遥测网系统)需要RF(Radio Frequency,射频)网络管理来协调资源分配,以满足性能要求.首先介绍了TmNS的总体架构,其RF链路除传统下行遥测链路外,新增了一条双向数据链路,实现多个试验对象和多个地面站的组网.随后讨论了该网络系统RF链路管理的原理和流程.由于链路管理器根据网络容量来分配TxOp (Transmission Opportunity,传输机会),故重点研究和比较了2种动态容量分配算法——B-LM算法和E-LM算法,ELM算法较B-LM算法略复杂,但可以减小系统延时,二者可以在链路管理器中共存,依据网络情况进行配置或切换.最后简要分析了链路管理器的软件结构.RF网络管理是TmNS的一项关键技术,该研究将促进我国新一代遥测网的发展.     

Influence of ionospheric perturbations in GPS time and frequency transfer

The stability of GPS time and frequency transfer is limited by the fact that GPS signals travel through the ionosphere. In high precision geodetic time transfer (i.e. based on precise modeling of code and carrier phase GPS data), the so-called ionosphere-free combination of the code and carrier phase measurements made on the two frequencies is used to remove the first-order ionospheric effect. In this paper, we investigate the impact of residual second- and third-order ionospheric effects on geodetic time transfer solutions i.e. remote atomic clock comparisons based on GPS measurements, using the ATOMIUM software developed at the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB). The impact of third-order ionospheric effects was shown to be negligible, while for second-order effects, the tests performed on different time links and at different epochs show a small impact of the order of some picoseconds, on a quiet day, and up to more than 10 picoseconds in case of high ionospheric activity. The geomagnetic storm of the 30th October 2003 is used to illustrate how space weather products are relevant to understand perturbations in geodetic time and frequency transfer.     

Testing a new multivariate GNSS carrier phase attitude determination method for remote sensing platforms

GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems)-based attitude determination is an important field of study, since it is a valuable technique for the orientation estimation of remote sensing platforms. To achieve highly accurate angular estimates, the precise GNSS carrier phase observables must be employed. However, in order to take full advantage of the high precision, the unknown integer ambiguities of the carrier phase observables need to be resolved. This contribution presents a GNSS carrier phase-based attitude determination method that determines the integer ambiguities and attitude in an integral manner, thereby fully exploiting the known body geometry of the multi-antennae configuration. It is shown that this integral approach aids the ambiguity resolution process tremendously and strongly improves the capacity of fixing the correct set of integer ambiguities. In this contribution, the challenging scenario of single-epoch, single-frequency attitude determination is addressed. This guarantees a total independence from carrier phase slips and losses of lock, and it also does not require any a priori motion model for the platform. The method presented is a multivariate constrained version of the popular LAMBDA method and it is tested on data collected during an airborne remote sensing campaign.     

Real-time zenith tropospheric delays in support of numerical weather prediction applications

The Geodetic Observatory Pecný (GOP) routinely estimates near real-time zenith total delays (ZTD) from GPS permanent stations for assimilation in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models more than 12 years. Besides European regional, global and GPS and GLONASS solutions, we have recently developed real-time estimates aimed at supporting NWP nowcasting or severe weather event monitoring. While all previous solutions are based on data batch processing in a network mode, the real-time solution exploits real-time global orbits and clocks from the International GNSS Service (IGS) and Precise Point Positioning (PPP) processing strategy. New application G-Nut/Tefnut has been developed and real-time ZTDs have been continuously processed in the nine-month demonstration campaign (February–October, 2013) for selected 36 European and global stations. Resulting ZTDs can be characterized by mean standard deviations of 6–10 mm, but still remaining large biases up to 20 mm due to missing precise models in the software. These results fulfilled threshold requirements for the operational NWP nowcasting (i.e. 30 mm in ZTD). Since remaining ZTD biases can be effectively eliminated using the bias-reduction procedure prior to the assimilation, results are approaching the target requirements in terms of relative accuracy (i.e. 6 mm in ZTD). Real-time strategy and software are under the development and we foresee further improvements in reducing biases and in optimizing the accuracy within required timeliness. The real-time products from the International GNSS Service were found accurate and stable for supporting PPP-based tropospheric estimates for the NWP nowcasting.     

测量船通信网络自检测方法

针对测量船通信网络由2层帧方式交换升级为3层包交换方式后无法使用上星自环检测方式实现自检测的问题,在分析通信网络自检测模式下的链路特性的基础上,提出基于组播报文实现自检测的构想。设计利用组播洪泛特性实现报文环回的网络拓扑结构以及实现检测与对比报文的硬件设备,阐述检测软件发送、接收、处理报文的流程,实现了网络通断、时延及丢包率的自检测,并通过模拟检测实验证明了设计方案是切实可行的。     

GPS/BDS组合定位精度分析

随着定位技术的不断发展及多系统导航定位技术的逐步推广，多系统组合导航定位已经成为了GNSS导航定位领域中的主要发展趋势。主要阐述了GPS/BDS组合相对定位的观测方程和数学模型，并根据实测数据对比分析，从卫星可见性、精度因子、定位精度和均方根误差等方面对GPS、BDS及GPS/BDS组合定位系统的定位性能、定位精度进行了比较。研究结果表明，较单一的GPS和BDS系统定位，采用GPS/BDS组合定位可有效提高卫星可见数目和DOP值，且稳定性更好。GPS/BDS组合定位的定位精度也明显优于单一系统，这对GNSS高精度导航定位具有重要的参考价值。