A new inter-system double-difference RTK model applicable to both overlapping and non-overlapping signal frequencies

Abstract

Aiming at the problem that the traditional inter-system double-difference model is not suitable for non-overlapping signal frequencies, we propose a new inter-system double-difference model with single difference ambiguity estimation, which can be applied for both overlapping and non-overlapping signal frequencies. The single difference ambiguities of all satellites and Differential Inter-System Biases (DISB) are first estimated, and the intra-system double difference ambiguities, which have integer characteristics, are then fixed. After the ambiguities are successfully fixed, high-precision coordinates and DISB can be obtained with a constructed transformation matrix. The model effectively avoids the DISB parameter filtering discontinuity caused by the reference satellite transformation and the low precision of the reference satellite single difference ambiguity calculated with the code. A zero-baseline using multiple types of receivers is selected to verify the stability of the estimated DISB. Three baselines with different lengths are selected to assess the positioning performance of the model. The ionospheric-fixed and ionospheric-float models are used for short and medium-long baselines, respectively. The results show that the Differential Inter-System Code Biases (DISCB) and Differential Inter-System Phase Biases (DISPB) have good stability regardless of the receivers type and the signal frequency used and can be calibrated to enhance the strength of the positioning model. The positioning results with three baselines of different lengths show that the proposed inter-system double-difference model can improve the positioning accuracy by 6–22% compared with the intra-system double-difference model which selects the reference satellite independently for each system. The Time to First Fix (TTFF) of the two medium-long baselines is reduced by 30% and 29%, respectively.