Precise orbit determination and baseline consistency assessment for Swarm constellation

Precise orbit determination (POD) and precise baseline determination (PBD) of Swarm satellites with 4 years of data are investigated. Ambiguity resolution (AR) plays a crucial role in achieving the best orbit accuracy. Swarm POD and PBD based on single difference (SD) AR and traditional double difference (DD) AR methods are explored separately. Swarm antenna phase center variation (PCV) corrections are developed to further improve the orbit determination accuracy. The code multipath of C1C, C1W and C2W observations is first evaluated and clear variations in code noise related to different receiver settings are observed. Carrier phase residuals of different time periods and different loop tracking settings of receiver are studied to explore the effect of ionospheric scintillation on POD. The reduction of residuals in the polar and geomagnetic equator regions confirms the positive impact of the updated carrier tracking loops (TLs) on POD performance. The SD AR orbits and orbits with float ambiguity (FA) are compared with the Swarm precise science orbits (PSOs). An average improvement of 27 %, 4 % and 16 % is gained in along-track, cross-track and radial directions by fixing the ambiguity to integer. For Swarm-A/B and Swarm-B/C formations, specific days are selected to perform the DD AR-based POD during which the average distance of the formation satellites is less than 5000 km. Satellite laser ranging (SLR) observations are employed to validate the performance of FA, SD AR and DD AR orbits. The consistency between the SD AR orbits and SLR data is at a level of 10 mm which shows an improvement of 25 % when comparing with the FA results. An SLR residuals reduction of 15 % is also achieved by the DD AR solution for the selected days. Precise relative navigation is also an essential aspect for spacecraft formation flying missions. The closure error method is proposed to evaluate the baseline precision in three dimensions. A baseline precision of 1–3 mm for Swarm-A/C formation and 3–5 mm for Swarm-A/B and Swarm-B/C satellite pairs is verified by both the consistency check and closure error method.     

Precise orbit determination for TH02-02 satellites based on BDS3 and GPS observations

The Tianhui-2 02 (TH02-02) satellite formation, as a supplement to the microwave mapping satellite system Tianhui-2 01 (TH02-01), is the first Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) satellite formation-flying system that supports the tracking of BeiDou global navigation Satellite system (BDS3) new B1C and B2a signals. Meanwhile, the twin TH02-02 satellites also support the tracking of Global Positioning System (GPS) L1&L2 and BDS B1I&B3I signals. As the spaceborne receiver employs two independent boards to track the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellites, we design an orbit determination strategy by estimating independent receiver clock offsets epoch by epoch for each GNSS to realize the multi-GNSS data fusion from different boards. The performance of the spaceborne receiver is evaluated and the contribution of BDS3 to the kinematic and reduced-dynamic Precise Orbit Determination (POD) of TH02-02 satellites is investigated. The tracking data onboard shows that the average number of available BDS3 and GPS satellites are 8.7 and 9.1, respectively. The carrier-to-noise ratio and carrier phase noise of BDS3 B1C and B2a signals are comparable to those of GPS. However, strong azimuth-related systematic biases are recognized in the pseudorange multipath errors of B1C and B3I. The pseudorange noise of BDS3 signals is better than that of GPS after eliminating the multipath errors from specific signals. Taking the GPS-based reduced-dynamic orbit with single-receiver ambiguity fixing technique as a reference, the results of BDS3-only and BDS3 + GPS combined POD are assessed. The Root Mean Square (RMS) of orbit comparison of BDS3-based kinematic and reduced-dynamic POD with reference orbit are better than 7 cm and 3 cm in three-Dimensional direction (3D). The POD performance based on B1C&B2a data is comparable to that based on B1I&B3I. The precision of BDS3 + GPS combined kinematic orbit can reach up to 3 cm (3D RMS), which has a more than 25% improvement relative to the GPS-only solution. In addition, the consistency between the BDS3 + GPS combined reduced-dynamic orbit and the GPS-based ambiguity-fixed orbit is better than 1.5 cm (3D RMS).     

多系统混频非差非组合精密单点定位方法研究

多系统多频精密单点定位(PPP)因具有增加观测冗余信息、提高系统性能可靠性和提升导航性能指标等优势而被广泛研究.非差非组合PPP模型直接使用原始伪距和载波相位观测值,不做任何线性组合,适合多系统多频率的PPP数据解算.目前,各个系统虽已提供3个或更多频率,但除北斗系统外,其余系统无法保证全星座都提供三频信号,使得多系统多频PPP的性能分析多采用多系统双频或单系统三频模型,没有充分利用多系统多频的观测信息.因此,采用多系统混频模型进行非差非组合PPP,该模型的具体表述为北斗三频+GPS双频+GLONASS双频PPP模型,充分利用可用的观测信息,提升了冗余度.利用CUT0、JFNG、NNOR、SIN1这4个测站的观测数据以及MGEX的精密轨道和钟差产品进行仿真实验,实验结果表明,多系统混频非差非组合PPP相较多系统双频非差非组合PPP的平均静态解RMS在东向提高了9.6％,北向相当,天向提高了11％;平均动态解RMS在东向提高了7.3％,北向相当,天向提高了5.7％.     

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.     

基于B1c/B2a/B3I北斗三频实时 高采样率动态PPP分析

为了分析北斗三号新信号的三频实时动态PPP定位性能，首先推导了三频两两组合无电离层模型和三频非差非组合模型的观测方程。基于山东建筑大学CORS站观测得到的北斗三号B1c/B2a/B3I三频信号1s采样率数据，使用iGMAS提供的超快速精密星历预报部分，制定了基于B1cB3I-B2aB3I三频无电离层两两组合、B1cB2aB3I三频非差非组合以及用于对比分析的B1cB2a、B1IB3I两种双频无电离层共四种定位方案。然后利用Net_Diff软件进行实时动态PPP实验，对超快速精密轨道和钟差预报部分的精度和稳定度以及实验解算结果进行分析，对比不同定位方案的定位性能。实验分析表明，两种三频定位方案定位性能均优于B1cB2a双频定位方案，定位精度能达到0.462m和0.479m，收敛至分米所需时间能达到45.8min和62.8min；B1IB3I方案定位性能优于两种三频定位方案，定位精度和收敛速度能达到0.228m和6.6min。