Experimental assessment of the time transfer capability of precise point positioning (PPP)

Abstract

In recent years, many national timing laboratories have installed geodetic global positioning system (GPS) receivers together with their traditional GPS/GLONASS common view (CV) receivers and two way satellite time and frequency transfer (TWSTFT) equipment. A method called precise point positioning (PPP) is in use in the geodetic community allowing precise recovery of geodetic GPS receiver position, clock phase and tropospheric delay by taking advantage of the International GNSS Service (IGS) precise products. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has developed software implementing the PPP and a previous assessment of the PPP as a promising time transfer method was carried out at Istituto Elettrotecnico Nazionale (IEN) in 2003. This paper reports on a more systematic work performed at IEN and NRCan to further characterize the PPP method for time transfer application, involving data from nine national timing laboratories. Dual-frequency GPS observations (pseudorange and carrier phase) over the last ninety days of year 2004 were processed using the NRCan PPP software to recover receiver clock estimates at five minute intervals, using the IGS final satellite orbit and clock products. The quality of these solutions is evaluated mainly in terms of short-term noise. In addition, the time and frequency transfer capability of the PPP method were assessed with respect to independent techniques, such as TWSTFT, over a number of European and Transatlantic baselines