Position-Domain Hatch Filter for Kinematic Differential GPS/GNSS

Motivated by the accuracy benefit of the Hatch gain compared with the Kalman-type gain and the advantage of position-domain (PD) filtering compared with range-domain (RD) filtering under frequent changes in visible satellite set, this paper proposes a PD Hatch filter for kinematic differential satellite-based positioning. It is shown that the Hatch gain generates white residual sequence in both the RD and the PD. An experiment result demonstrates that the proposed PD Hatch filter is advantageous in real-time kinematic positioning.     

Virtual baseline method for Beidou attitude determination – An improved long-short baseline ambiguity resolution method

Ambiguity resolution (AR) is a critical step for successful attitude determination using carrier phase measurements of a satellite navigation system such as Beidou. This paper proposes an improved method for AR in support of Beidou attitude determination based on the concept of a “virtual baseline”. In the traditional long-short baseline method, the short baseline is limited to a length less than half of the carrier wave length of the Beidou signals. In the proposed method, a virtual short baseline is formed by differencing two collinear baselines. The AR equations for virtual short and long baselines are derived and the factors impacting the AR accuracy are analysed. Numerical simulation studies were carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed AR method. The simulation results confirmed that the proposed method is an improvement over the traditional approach -- not only is it easier to deploy collinear antennas but also it keeps the capability of epoch-by-epoch AR, which makes it immune to cycle slips and there is no need for initialisation of ambiguity searching.     

Enhancing the kinematic precise orbit determination of low earth orbiters using GPS receiver clock modelling

Clock error estimation has been the focus of a great deal of research because of the extensive usage of clocks in GPS positioning applications. The receiver clock error in the spacecraft orbit determination is commonly estimated on an epoch-by-epoch basis, along with the spacecraft’s position. However, due to the high correlation between the spacecraft orbit altitude and the receiver clock parameters, estimates of the radial component are degraded in the kinematic approach. Using clocks with high stability, the predictable behaviour of the receiver oscillator can be exploited to improve the positioning accuracy, especially for the radial component. This paper introduces two GPS receiver clock models to describe the deterministic and stochastic property of the receiver clock, both of which can improve the accuracy of kinematic orbit determination for spacecraft in low earth orbit. In particular, the clock parameters are estimated as time offset and frequency offset in the two-state model. The frequency drift is also estimated as an unknown parameter in the three-state model. Additionally, residual non-deterministic random errors such as frequency white noise, frequency random walk noise and frequency random run noise are modelled. Test results indicate that the positioning accuracy could be improved significantly using one day of GRACE flight data. In particular, the error of the radial component was reduced by over 40.0% in the real-time scenario.