Effect of biases in integrity monitoring for RTK positioning

In road transport, continuous high-accuracy positioning is required in real time. To ensure the proper functioning and safety of vehicular applications, integrity monitoring (IM) is needed to protect from the positioning errors under a certain alert limit (AL) with a pre-defined probability of misleading information (MI). In this study, a detailed threat model is developed for real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning application of short baselines. The model distinguishes between ambiguity-float and -fixed scenarios, and considers the influences of phase and code multipath as well as between-receiver atmospheric residuals. With the float ambiguities temporally constrained, the bias contribution that propagates with time-updated ambiguities was studied analytically for the horizontal protection level (HPL) in IM. Based on real data from both static and kinematic experiments, HPL was computed along the direction of the semi-major axis of the horizontal error ellipse. In ambiguity-float and -fixed cases, the HPL was mostly several meters and decimetres, respectively. It was found that time-propagated biases play a dominant role in the ambiguity-float HPL, and among them, phase and code multipath had in general the largest contributions. For ambiguity-fixed case, the phase multipath was found to play a dominant role in the HPL. This shows the importance of considering the biases in the RTK IM for both the ambiguity-float and -fixed scenarios. Given a horizontal alert limit (HAL) of 5 m, the availabilities of ambiguity-float solutions were low, i.e., below 50% for the static roof tests and below 5% for the kinematic road tests. For the ambiguity-fixed scenario, with HAL at 0.5 m, integrity availability was nearly 100% for the static roof tests and above 85% for the kinematic road tests.     

Calibration errors in determining slant Total Electron Content (TEC) from multi-GNSS data

The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is presently a powerful tool for sensing the Earth's ionosphere. For this purpose, the ionospheric measurements (IMs), which are by definition slant total electron content biased by satellite and receiver differential code biases (DCBs), need to be first extracted from GNSS data and then used as inputs for further ionospheric representations such as tomography. By using the customary phase-to-code leveling procedure, this research comparatively evaluates the calibration errors on experimental IMs obtained from three GNSS, namely the US Global Positioning System (GPS), the Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), and the European Galileo. On the basis of ten days of dual-frequency, triple-GNSS observations collected from eight co-located ground receivers that independently form short-baselines and zero-baselines, the IMs are determined for each receiver for all tracked satellites and then for each satellite differenced for each baseline to evaluate their calibration errors. As first derived from the short-baseline analysis, the effects of calibration errors on IMs range, in total electron content units, from 1.58 to 2.16, 0.70 to 1.87, and 1.13 to 1.56 for GPS, Galileo, and BDS, respectively. Additionally, for short-baseline experiment, it is shown that the code multipath effect accounts for their main budget. Sidereal periodicity is found in single-differenced (SD) IMs for GPS and BDS geostationary satellites, and the correlation of SD IMs over two consecutive days achieves the maximum value when the time tag is around 4?min. Moreover, as byproducts of zero-baseline analysis, daily between-receiver DCBs for GPS are subject to more significant intra-day variations than those for BDS and Galileo.     

伪距波动原因中的星体多径因素排除

针对卫星可视弧段内伪距测量异常波动现象,从信号质量监测角度研究了卫星可视弧段内导航信号测距偏差变化问题,确认伪距波动是否由星体多径引起.利用大口径天线跟踪北斗卫星,采用两套采集设备实现了卫星可视弧段内的B1频点信号多次高载噪比采集,根据基于参考波形的测距偏差估计方法分别处理多组采集数据,获得了不同仰角上的测距偏差.在一个仰角下的采集数据,当滤波器带宽远远大于信号带宽时,采样率与下变频器均不同的两套采集设备获得的测距偏差相同,且测距偏差均与相关间距及滤波器带宽有关,但当滤波器带宽超过15MHz后,测距偏差的差异可以忽略.比较不同仰角下的测距偏差,在卫星可视弧段内测距偏差变化很小,因此认为星体多径引起卫星可视弧段内信号质量的变化不是伪距测量异常波动的原因.     

Correction model of BDS satellite-induced code bias and its impact on precise point positioning

There are code biases on the pseudo-range observations of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) that range in size from several decimeters to larger than one meter. These biases can be divided into two categories, which are the code biases in the pseudo-range observations of Inclined Geo-Synchronous Orbit (IGSO) satellites and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites and the code biases in the pseudo-range observations of Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites. In view of the code bias of the IGSO/MEO satellites, the code bias correction model is established using the weighted least square curve fitting method. After the correction, the code biases of the IGSO and MEO satellites are clearly mitigated. A methodology of correcting GEO code bias is proposed based on the empirical mode decomposition (EMD)-wavelet transform (WT) coupled model. The accuracies of the GEO multipath combination of the B1, B2 and B3 frequencies are improved by 39.9%, 17.9%, and 29.4%, respectively. Based on the corrections above, the ten days observations of three Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations are processed. The results indicate that the convergence time of the precise point positioning (PPP) can be improved remarkably by applying a code bias. The mean convergence time can be improved by 14.67% after the IGSO/MEO code bias correction. By applying the GEO code bias, the mean convergence time can be further improved by 17.42%.     

Differential code bias estimation based on uncombined PPP with LEO onboard GPS observations

Differential Code Bias (DCB) is an essential correction that must be provided to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) users for precise position determination. With the continuous deployment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, DCB estimation using observations from GNSS receivers onboard the LEO satellites is drawing increasing interests in order to meet the growing demands on high-quality DCB products from LEO-based applications, such as LEO-based GNSS signal augmentation and space weather research. Previous studies on LEO-based DCB estimation are usually using the geometry-free combination of GNSS observations, and it may suffer from significant leveling errors due to non-zero mean of multipath errors and short-term variations of receiver code and phase biases. In this study, we utilize the uncombined Precise Point Positioning (PPP) model for LEO DCB estimation. The models for uncombined PPP-based LEO DCB estimation are presented and GPS observations acquired from receivers onboard three identical Swarm satellites from February 1 to 28, 2019 are used for the validation. The results show that the average Root Mean Square errors (RMS) of the GPS satellite DCBs estimated with onboard data from each of the three Swarm satellites using the uncombined PPP model are less than 0.18 ns when compared to the GPS satellite DCBs obtained from IGS final daily Global Ionospheric Map (GIM) products. Meanwhile, the corresponding average RMS of GPS satellite DCBs estimated with the conventional geometry-free model are 0.290, 0.210, 0.281 ns, respectively, which are significantly larger than those obtained with the uncombined PPP model. It is also noted that the estimated GPS satellite DCBs by Swarm A and C satellites are highly correlated, likely attributed to their similar orbit type and space environment. On the other hand, the Swarm receiver DCBs estimated with uncombined PPP model, with Standard Deviation (STD) of 0.065, 0.037 and 0.071 ns, are more stable than those obtained from the official Swarm Level 2 products with corresponding STD values of 0.115, 0.101, and 0.109 ns, respectively. The above indicates that high-quality DCB products can be estimated based on uncombined PPP with LEO onboard observations.     

Analysis of the code and phase between-receiver inter-system biases of the overlapping frequencies for GPS/Galileo/BDS

The overlapping-frequency signals from different GNSS constellations are interoperable and can be integrated as one constellation in multi-GNSS positioning when inter-system bias (ISB) is properly disposed. The look-up table method for ISB calibration can enhance the model strength, maximize the number of integer-estimable ambiguities, and thus is preferred. However, the characteristics and magnitudes of the receiver code ISB and phase fractional ISB (F-ISB) are not well known and the wrong values of the biases can seriously degrade the positioning results. In this contribution, we first estimate the between-receiver code ISB and phase F-ISB of hundreds of the baselines up to around 25km in the European Permanent GNSS Network (EPN) and the Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) for the overlapping frequencies L1-E1 (L1), L5-E5a (L5) and E5b-B2b (L7). The data collected from 1st January 2016 to 1st January 2019. Second, the receiver-type and firmware-version combinations for the receivers of Trimble, Leica, Javad, Septentrio and NovAtel are carefully classified. Results show that the Septentrio receivers have consistent code and phase ISB values for the three overlapping frequencies i.e. only one value for each frequency and no receivers are different. The Leica, Trimble and Javad receivers have two or more ISB values for at least one of the three frequencies. A few receivers with biases to the groups are also found and listed. Third, the code ISB and phase F-ISB of the groups are adjusted by the least-squares method. The root mean square errors (RMSE) of the least square adjustment are 0.240 m, 0.250 m and 0.200 m for code of L1, L5 and L7 frequencies, respectively, and are 0.0009 m, 0.0015 m and 0.0031 m for phase of L1, L5 and L7 frequencies, respectively. Finally, the effects of code ISB errors on code positing are investigated with the zero-baseline MAT1_MATZ. The distance root mean square error (DRMS) of L1-E1 code positioning can be reduced by 48.2% with 5 GPS and Galileo satellites and the DRMS degrades quickly when the code ISB error is larger.     

Contribution analysis of QZSS to single-frequency PPP of GPS/BDS/GLONASS/Galileo

The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) established by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency mainly serves the Asia-Pacific region and its surrounding areas. Currently, four in-orbit satellites provide services. Most users of GNSS in the mass market use single-frequency (SF) receivers owing to the low cost. Therefore, it is meaningful to analyze and evaluate the contribution of the QZSS to SF precise point positioning (PPP) of GPS/BDS/GLONASS/Galileo systems with the emergence of GNSS and QZSS. This study compares the performances of three SF PPP models, namely the GRoup and PHase Ionospheric Correction (GRAPHIC) model, GRAPHIC with code observation model, and an ionosphere-constrained model, and evaluated the contribution of the QZSS to the SF PPP of GPS/BDS/GLONASS/Galileo systems. Moreover, the influence of code bias on the SF PPP of the BDS system is also analyzed. A two-week dataset (DOY 013–026, 2019) from 10 stations of the MGEX network is selected for validation, and the results show that: (1) For cut-off elevation angles of 15, 20, and 25°, the convergence times for the static SF PPP of GLONASS + QZSS are reduced by 4.3, 30.8, and 12.7%, respectively, and the positioning accuracy is similar compared with that of the GLONASS system. Compared with the BDS single system, the convergence times for the static SF PPP of BDS + QZSS under 15 and 25° are reduced by 37.6 and 39.2%, the horizontal positioning accuracies are improved by 18.6 and 14.1%, and the vertical components are improved by 13.9 and 21.4%, respectively. At cut-off elevation angles of 15, 20, and 25°, the positioning accuracy and precision of GPS/BDS/GLONASS/Galileo + QZSS is similar to that of GPS/BDS/GLONASS/Galileo. And the convergence times are reduced by 7.4 and 4.3% at cut-off elevation angles of 20 and 25°, respectively. In imitating dynamic PPP, the QZSS significantly improves the positioning accuracy of BDS and GLONASS. However, QZSS has little effect on the GPS-only, Galileo-only and GPS/BDS/GLONASS/Galileo. (2) The code bias of BDS IGSO and MEO cannot be ignored in SF PPP. In static SF PPP, taking the frequency band of B1I whose multipath combination is the largest among the frequency bands as an example, the vertical component has a systematic bias of approximately 0.4–1.0 m. After correcting the code bias, the positioning error in the vertical component is lower than 0.2 m, and the positioning accuracy in the horizontal component are improved accordingly. (3) The SF PPP model with ionosphere constraints has a better convergence speed, while the positioning accuracy of the three models is nearly equal. Therefore the GRAPHIC model can be used to get good positioning accuracy in the absence of external ionosphere products, but its convergence speed is slower.     

GLONASS-based precise point positioning and performance analysis

Current precise point positioning (PPP) techniques are mainly based on GPS which has been extensively investigated. With the increase of available GLONASS satellites during its revitalization, GLONASS observations were increasingly integrated into GPS-based PPP. Now that GLONASS has reached its full constellation, there will be a wide interest in PPP systems based on only GLONASS since it provides a PPP implementation independent of GPS. An investigation of GLONASS-based PPP will also help the development of GPS and GLONASS combined PPP techniques for improved precision and reliability. This paper presents an observation model for GLONASS-based PPP in which the GLONASS hardware delay biases are addressed. In view of frequently changed frequency channel number (FCN) for GLONASS satellites, an algorithm has been developed to compute the FCN for GLONASS satellites using code and phase observations, which avoids the need to provide the GLONASS frequency channel information during data processing. The observation residuals from GLONASS-based PPP are analyzed and compared to those from GPS-based PPP. The performance of GLONASS-based PPP is assessed using data from 15 globally distributed stations.     

Azimuth selection for sea level measurements using geodetic GPS receivers

Based on analysis of Global Positioning System (GPS) multipath signals recorded by a geodetic GPS receiver, GPS Reflectometry (GPS-R) has demonstrated unique advantages in relation to sea level monitoring. Founded on multipath reflectometry theory, sea level changes can be measured by GPS-R through spectral analysis of recorded signal-to-noise ratio data. However, prior to estimating multipath parameters, it is necessary to define azimuth and elevation angle mask to ensure the reflecting zones are on water. Here, a method is presented to address azimuth selection, a topic currently under active development in the field of GPS-R. Data from three test sites: the Kachemak Bay GPS site PBAY in Alaska (USA), Friday Harbor GPS site SC02 in the San Juan Islands (USA), and Brest Harbor GPS site BRST in Brest (France) are analyzed. These sites are located in different multipath environments, from a rural coastal area to a busy harbor, and they experience different tidal ranges. Estimates by the GPS tide gauges at azimuths selected by the presented method are compared with measurements from physical tide gauges and acceptable correspondence found for all three sites.     

The use of ionospheric tomography and elevation masks to reduce the overall error in single-frequency GPS timing applications

Signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites at the horizon or at low elevations are often excluded from a GPS solution because they experience considerable ionospheric delays and multipath effects. Their exclusion can degrade the overall satellite geometry for the calculations, resulting in greater errors; an effect known as the Dilution of Precision (DOP). In contrast, signals from high elevation satellites experience less ionospheric delays and multipath effects. The aim is to find a balance in the choice of elevation mask, to reduce the propagation delays and multipath whilst maintaining good satellite geometry, and to use tomography to correct for the ionosphere and thus improve single-frequency GPS timing accuracy. GPS data, collected from a global network of dual-frequency GPS receivers, have been used to produce four GPS timing solutions, each with a different ionospheric compensation technique. One solution uses a 4D tomographic algorithm, Multi-Instrument Data Analysis System (MIDAS), to compensate for the ionospheric delay. Maps of ionospheric electron density are produced and used to correct the single-frequency pseudorange observations. This method is compared to a dual-frequency solution and two other single-frequency solutions: one does not include any ionospheric compensation and the other uses the broadcast Klobuchar model. Data from the solar maximum year 2002 and October 2003 have been investigated to display results when the ionospheric delays are large and variable. The study focuses on Europe and results are produced for the chosen test site, VILL (Villafranca, Spain). The effects of excluding all of the GPS satellites below various elevation masks, ranging from 5° to 40°, on timing solutions for fixed (static) and mobile (moving) situations are presented. The greatest timing accuracies when using the fixed GPS receiver technique are obtained by using a 40° mask, rather than a 5° mask. The mobile GPS timing solutions are most accurate when satellites at lower elevations continue to be included: using a mask between 10° and 20°. MIDAS offers the most accurate and least variable single-frequency timing solution and accuracies to within 10 ns are achieved for fixed GPS receiver situations. Future improvements are anticipated by combining both GPS and Galileo data towards computing a timing solution.     

Estimation and analysis of GPS receiver differential code biases using KGN in Korean Peninsula

The total electron content (TEC) estimation by the Global Positioning System (GPS) can be seriously affected by the differential code biases (DCB), referred to as inter-frequency biases (IFB), of the satellite and receiver so that an accuracy of GPS–TEC value is dependent on the error of DCBs estimation. In this paper, we proposed the singular value decomposition (SVD) method to estimate the DCB of GPS satellites and receivers using the Korean GPS network (KGN) in South Korea. The receiver DCBs of about 49 GPS reference stations in KGN were determined for the accurate estimation of the regional ionospheric TEC. They obtained from the daily solution have large biases ranging from +5 to +27 ns for geomagnetic quiet days. The receiver DCB of SUWN reference station was compared with the estimates of IGS and JPL global ionosphere map (GIM). The results have shown comparatively good agreement at the level within 0.2 ns. After correction of receiver DCBs and knowing the satellite DCBs, the comparison between the behavior of the estimated TEC and that of GIMs was performed for consecutive three days. We showed that there is a good agreement between KASI model and GIMs.     

Tomographic reconstruction of the ionospheric electron density as a function of space and time

Electron density distribution is the major determining parameter of the ionosphere. Computerized Ionospheric Tomography (CIT) is a method to reconstruct ionospheric electron density image by computing Total Electron Content (TEC) values from the recorded Global Positioning Satellite System (GPS) signals. Due to the multi-scale variability of the ionosphere and inherent biases and errors in the computation of TEC, CIT constitutes an underdetermined ill-posed inverse problem. In this study, a novel Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) based CIT reconstruction technique is proposed for the imaging of electron density in both space (latitude, longitude, altitude) and time. The underlying model is obtained from International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) and the necessary measurements are obtained from earth based and satellite based GPS recordings. Based on the IRI-2007 model, a basis is formed by SVD for the required location and the time of interest. Selecting the first few basis vectors corresponding to the most significant singular values, the 3-D CIT is formulated as a weighted least squares estimation problem of the basis coefficients. By providing significant regularization to the tomographic inversion problem with limited projections, the proposed technique provides robust and reliable 3-D reconstructions of ionospheric electron density.     

Coherent superposition of multi-GNSS wavelet analysis periodogram for sea-level retrieval in GNSS multipath reflectometry

The multipath signals of GNSS can act as a tide gauge via a technology called Global Navigation Satellite Systems multipath reflectometry (GNSS-MR), which is based on the relationship between multipath frequency and height to sea surface. In addition to the traditional frequency extraction method of Lomb–Scargle periodogram (LSP), wavelet analysis can be applied to extract instantaneous multipath frequencies of GPS L1, thus improving data utilization. However, because of the sensitivity of instantaneous frequency to noise and the introduction of more signals, multi-constellation retrievals exhibit many outliers and errors. The aim of this study is to apply wavelet analysis to multi-constellation multi-frequency signals and most importantly to find a method to avoid noise. We used coherent superposition to overlap the intra-track inter-signal instantaneous frequency spectrograms to enhance effective information and to weaken noise. This coherent superposition method can achieve intra-track inter-signal combination. The multi-GNSS data from two Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations were used. The results showed that the coherent superposition spectrogram has a clear energy concentration, and the frequencies calculated from it depict sea-level changes. To compare the method with the LSP method and to combine inter-track retrievals, a robust regression method was used to combine retrievals and to produce equally spaced retrieval series. The results show that the combined retrievals from the coherent superposition method have a slightly higher accuracy than those from the classical LSP method. Because this method can be used to retrieve sea-level data from instantaneous frequency, it increases data utilization and provides a way to obtain details of SNR arcs, which is a potential method to benefit GNSS-MR, especially for sites with narrow reflecting sensing zones in a small sea azimuth range.     

利用GPS实现高轨卫星定位的抗远近效应算法

针对GPS应用于高轨卫星定位面临的远近效应问题, 提出利用正交相关的联合极大似然估计算法来对GPS信号进行二维搜索, 可以得到正确的码延时及多普勒估计. 极大似然估计算法首先利用滑行相关法对仿真信号中的强信号进行搜索, 得到强信号模型, 然后利用正交相关去掉强信号, 最终实现对弱信号的正确捕获. 本文对高轨卫星接收到的GPS信号进行了功率分析, 并建立了信号模型, 进行了算法仿真. 结果表明, 这种估计算法能够提高二维搜索性能, 有效解决远近效应问题.     

Fast calibration of between-receiver GPS/Galileo/BDS differential phase bias with millimeter accuracy based on short baseline mode

The differential code and phase biases induced by the receiver hardware (including receiver, antenna, firmware, etc.) of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) have significant effects on precise timing and ionosphere sensing, thus deserve careful treatment. In this contribution, we propose an approach to fast fix the single-difference ambiguity to finally obtain the unbiased estimates of between-receiver differential phase bias (BR-DPB) and between-receiver differential code-phase bias (BR-DCPB) based on the short baseline mode. The key to this method is that the error sources can be significantly eliminated due to the length of the baseline is very short. At the same time, the empirical constraints and random characteristics of BR-DPB/BR-DCPB were considered, which is conducive to the resolution of single-difference ambiguity. Several sets of GNSS data (GPS L1/L2, Galileo E1/E5b, and BDS B1/B3), recorded by the short baselines in an interval of 30 s and covered a broad range of receiver/antenna types (JAVA, SEPT, LEIC, and TRIM), were used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The numerical tests show that the proposed method is capable of fast fixing the single-difference ambiguity successfully within a few epochs and then providing the unbiased estimates of BR-DPB and BR-DCPB in an epoch-by-epoch manner. Experiments show that the estimated BR-DPB is in millimeter accuracy, which is of great significance for the millimeter-accuracy phase time transfer and ionospheric delay estimation. Furthermore, the calibrated BR-DPB/BR-DCPB can be treated as the known products for long-distance precise timing and ionosphere sensing based on the inter-station single-difference model.     

A method of estimating GPS instrumental biases with a convolution algorithm

This paper presents a method of deriving the instrumental differential code biases (DCBs) of GPS satellites and dual frequency receivers. Considering that the total electron content (TEC) varies smoothly over a small area, one ionospheric pierce point (IPP) and four more nearby IPPs were selected to build an equation with a convolution algorithm. In addition, unknown DCB parameters were arranged into a set of equations with GPS observations in a day unit by assuming that DCBs do not vary within a day. Then, the DCBs of satellites and receivers were determined by solving the equation set with the least-squares fitting technique. The performance of this method is examined by applying it to 361?days in 2014 using the observation data from 1311 GPS Earth Observation Network (GEONET) receivers. The result was crosswise-compared with the DCB estimated by the mesh method and the IONEX products from the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE). The DCB values derived by this method agree with those of the mesh method and the CODE products, with biases of 0.091?ns and 0.321?ns, respectively. The convolution method's accuracy and stability were quite good and showed improvements over the mesh method.     

Estimation of QZSS differential code biases using QZSS/GPS combined observations from MGEX

As an important error source in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning and ionospheric modeling, the differential code biases (DCB) need to be estimated accurately, e.g., the regional Quasi-Zenith satellite system (QZSS). In this paper, the DCB of QZSS is estimated by adopting the global ionospheric modeling method based on QZSS/GPS combined observations from Multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX). The performance of QZSS satellite and receiver DCB is analyzed with observations from day of year (DOY) 275–364, 2018. Good agreement between our estimated QZSS satellite DCB and the products from DLR and CAS is obtained. The bias and root mean square (RMS) of DCB are mostly within ±0.3 ns. The day-to-day fluctuation of the DCB time series is less than 0.5 ns with about 96% of the cases for all satellites. However, the receiver DCB is a little less stable than satellite DCB, and their standard deviations (STDs) are within 1.9 ns. The result shows that the stability of the receiver DCBs is not significantly related to the types of receiver or antenna.     

An analysis on combined GPS/COMPASS data quality and its effect on single point positioning accuracy under different observing conditions

With the rapid development of the COMPASS system, it is currently capable of providing regional navigation services. In order to test its data quality and performance for single point positioning (SPP), experiments have been conducted under different observing conditions including open sky, under trees, nearby a glass wall, nearby a large area of water, under high-voltage lines and under a signal transmitting tower. To assess the COMPASS data quality, the code multipath, cycle slip occurrence rate and data availability were analyzed and compared to GPS data. The datasets obtained from the experiments have also been utilized to perform combined GPS/COMPASS SPP on an epoch-by-epoch basis using unsmoothed single-frequency code observations. The investigation on the regional navigation performance aims at low-accuracy applications and all tests are made in Changsha, China, using the “SOUTH S82-C” GPS/COMPASS receivers. The results show that adding COMPASS observations can significantly improve the positioning accuracy of single-frequency GPS-only SPP in environments with limited satellite visibility. Since the COMPASS system is still in an initial operational stage, all results are obtained based on a fairly limited amount of data.     

Sensing snow height and surface temperature variations in Greenland from GPS reflected signals

The in situ measurements of snow surface temperature (SST) and snow height (SH) are very difficult with high costs, particularly in Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). Since the snow depth variations coupling with surface temperature are related to GPS multipath, it is possible to estimate the snow depth and surface air temperature variations by incorporating GPS-Reflectometry (GPS-R). In this paper, the reflected signals from ground GPS receivers are used to sense the SST and SH variations based on the thermophysical behavior and variations of snow layer from April to June 2010 at SMM1 site and from March to December 2010 at MARG site in Greenland. The results show that the mean daily changes in the ionospheric geometrical-free linear combination (GPS-L4) of dual-frequency GPS signals are related to daily SST and SH variations. The nonparametric bootstrapping model in direct (forward) and inverse models are developed and applied to estimate the SST and SH variations. The mean biases of SST and SH estimates are 0.18 °C and 0.23 m at SMM1 site, respectively, and 3.8 °C and 0.13 m at MARG site, respectively.     

基于BDS/GPS的KBLMS信道补偿多径缓减算法

在全球卫星导航系统（GNSS）中，针对城市峡谷单系统无法定位及信号失锁后重新捕获及跟踪性能表现不佳的问题，提出了一种基于BDS/GPS的卡尔曼最小均方估计（KBLMS）的信道补偿技术。首先，建立双系统模型。其次，设计基于卡尔曼估计的最小均方误差的延迟估计模块，补偿接收信号上的多径失真。最后，设计视距（LOS）最佳估计块以在反馈回路中产生控制误差信号，用于自适应地更新补偿矩阵系数。通过实测数据与实验仿真，分析KBLMS的信道补偿多径缓减算法的性能。结果表明:KBLMS的信道补偿多径缓减技术相较于最小均方（LMS）算法在多径信道中能快速收敛，且码跟踪误差在ENU三个维度误差减少了0.1 chip，载波跟踪误差减少了约0.125 cm，有效降低了多径效应引起的误差，最终残余误差比LMS降低了0.035 chip，说明所提多径缓减算法可以进行更为精准的估计，从而验证了算法的有效性。