Negative VTEC with spherical harmonic expansion model under different solar activity conditions

The Earth’s ionosphere can be described by a spherical harmonic (SH) expansion up to a specific degree. However, there exist negative vertical total electron content (VTEC) values in the global ionosphere map (GIM) with the SH expansion model. In this contribution, we specifically investigated the negative VTEC values that are induced by the SH expansion model and validated the performance of the inequality-constrained least squares (ICLS) method in eliminating the negative VTEC values. The GPS data from 2004 to 2017 was selected to cover one solar cycle and the experiments under different solar activity conditions were analyzed. The results in our work show that the occurrence of the negative VTEC values is attributed to the deficiency of the SH expansion model when the VTEC itself is small instead of the unevenly distribution of the GNSS stations. The negative VTEC values appear periodically in the temporal domain, showing apparently one year and half year periods. During one year, two peaks in June and December can be observed in the time series of the negative VTEC values. The number of negative VTEC values in June is obvious larger than that in December. During one solar cycle, the number of negative VTEC values under quiet solar activity condition is obvious larger than that under strong solar activity condition. In the spatial domain, the appearance of the negative VTEC values is strongly related with the movement of the subsolar point. In the latitude of the subsolar point has the largest magnitude, the negative values will appear on the opposite hemisphere and the further from the subsolar point the more negative values. The maximum number of the negative VTEC values in the southern hemisphere appears in June, while the peak value in the northern hemisphere appears in December. The maximum number of negative VTEC values in the southern hemisphere is generally larger than that in the northern hemisphere. In addition, the negative VTEC values are distributed both at middle latitude and high latitude in the southern hemisphere, while they are mainly distributed at high latitude in the northern hemisphere. When the ICLS method is used, the negative VTEC values can be eliminated efficiently and it has nearly no influence on the positive VTEC values. The ICLS method can also improve the receiver’s differential code bias (DCB) and significantly decrease the unreasonable negative slant TEC (STEC) values along the lines of sight. Using the final GIM product of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPLG) as a reference, the root mean square (RMS) of the ICLS solution shows maximum 25%, 20% and 45% improvement relative to the least squares (LS) solution at northern high latitude, southern middle latitude and southern high latitude, respectively.     

卫星授时与时间传递技术进展

近年来,卫星导航技术发展迅速.卫星导航系统以精密时间测量技术为基础,实现了伪距测量,进而实现定位.同时,卫星导航系统还提供了高精度授时功能.综述了卫星导航系统的授时和时间频率传递技术、基于通信卫星的授时技术以及双向卫星时间频率传递(TWSTFT)技术等.随着我国北斗卫星导航系统(BDS)的建成和提供服务,BDS授时应用...     

差分码偏差对PPP授时精度影响的研究

论文分析了不同机构差分码偏差(DCB)产品的天稳性.选取了2个外接氢原子钟的测站进行实验,以国际GNSS服务组织(IGS)发布的接收机钟差为参考值,分析了不同机构DCB产品对2个测站PPP授时精度的影响.实验结果表明:1)不同机构DCB产品的天稳性差异不大,中国科学院天稳性略优于德国宇航中心;2)2个测站使用不同机构的DCB产品估计钟差的均方差(RMS)和时间偏差(Bias)均优于0.4ns,其中中国科学院产品精度最高,RMS和Bias均优于0.2ns;德国宇航中心和欧洲定轨中心精度略差,但也能够达到亚纳秒级,可为下一步推广PPP授时应用提供一定的参考.