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Combined GPS and BDS for single-frequency continuous RTK positioning through real-time estimation of differential inter-system biases

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Abstract

Double-differenced (DD) ambiguities between overlapping frequencies from different GNSS constellations can be fixed to integers if the associated differential inter-system biases (DISBs) are well known. In this case, only one common pivot satellite is sufficient for inter-system ambiguity resolution. This will be beneficial to ambiguity resolution (AR) and real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning especially when only a few satellites are observed. However, for GPS and current operational BDS-2, there are no overlapping frequencies. Due to the influence of different frequencies, the inter-system DD ambiguities still cannot be fixed to integers even if the DISBs are precisely known. In this contribution, we present an inter-system differencing model for combined GPS and BDS single-frequency RTK positioning through real-time estimation of DISBs. The stability of GPS L1 and BDS B1 DISBs is analyzed with different receiver types. Along with parameterization and using the short-term stability of DISBs, the DD ambiguities between GPS and BDS pivot satellites and the between-receiver single-difference ambiguity of the GPS pivot satellite can be estimable jointly with the differential phase DISB term from epoch to epoch. Then the inter-system differencing model can benefit from the near time-constant DISB parameters and thus has better multi-epoch positioning performance than the classical intra-system differencing model. The combined GPS and BDS single-frequency RTK positioning performance is evaluated with various simulated satellite visibilities. It will be shown that compared with the classical intra-system differencing model, the proposed model can effectively improve the positioning accuracy and reliability, especially for severely obstructed situations with only a few satellites observed.

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Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41574026), the National Key Technologies R&D Program (Grant No. 2016YFB0502101), the Primary Research and Development Plan of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BE2016176) and the Scientific Research Foundation of Graduated School of Southeast University (Grant No.YBJJ1635). The authors gratefully acknowledge GNSS Research Centre of Curtin University for providing the multi-GNSS observation data. Thanks also go to the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for the funding of the first author’s living expenses during his study at the University of Nottingham in the UK. Miss Roxanne Parnham at the Sino-UK Geospatial Engineering Centre of the University of Nottingham is acknowledged for the proofreading.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Wang Gao, Chengfa Gao & Denghui Wang

  2. Nottingham Geospatial Institute, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2TU, UK

    Wang Gao & Xiaolin Meng

  3. School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Shuguo Pan

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  1. Wang Gao
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  2. Xiaolin Meng
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  3. Chengfa Gao
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  4. Shuguo Pan
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  5. Denghui Wang
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Correspondence to Chengfa Gao or Shuguo Pan.

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Gao, W., Meng, X., Gao, C. et al. Combined GPS and BDS for single-frequency continuous RTK positioning through real-time estimation of differential inter-system biases. GPS Solut 22, 20 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-017-0687-5

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