The update of BDS-2 TGD and its impact on positioning

Timing group delay (TGD) is an important parameter that affects the positioning performance of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) broadcasts TGD corrections from B3I frequency to B1I and B2I frequencies, namely TGD₁ and TGD₂. On July 21, 2017, BDS updated TGD values with a maximum change of more than 4 ns. In this contribution, we explain the motivation for the BDS TGD update, which is due to the systematic bias between narrowly correlated and widely correlated pseudo-ranges in BDS monitoring receivers. To investigate the impact of the updated TGD, BDS signal-in-space range error (SISRE) and user positioning performance regarding single point positioning (SPP) and precise point positioning (PPP) are analyzed. Results show that after the update of TGD, the difference between the new TGD and multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) differential code bias (DCB) decreases from 1.38 ns to 0.29 ns on TGD₁ and from 0.40 ns to 0.25 ns on TGD₂. With the contribution of more accurate TGD, the systematic bias of BDS radial SISRE no longer exists, and the overall BDS SISRE also reduces from 1.33 m to 0.87 m on B1I/B2I frequency, from 1.05 m to 0.89 m on B1I frequency, from 0.92 m to 0.91 m on B2I frequency, respectively, which proves the similar precision of BDS TGD and MGEX DCB. One week of statistical results from 28 globally distributed MGEX stations shows that the SPP performance improves on non-B3I frequencies after the TGD update, with a maximum improvement of more than 22% for the B1I/B2I or B1I/B3I combination. The new TGD mainly reduces SPP positioning bias in the East component. The updated TGD also slightly improves the PPP convergence performance for the B1I/B3I combination, but mostly contributes to a more accurate estimation of the receiver clock and ambiguities.