Mitigation of receiver biases in ionospheric observables from PPP with ambiguity resolution

Abstract

PPP (Precise Point Positioning) is a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) positioning method that requires SSR (State Space Representation) corrections in order to provide solutions with an accuracy of centimetric level. The so-called RT-PPP (Real-time PPP) is possible thanks to real-time precise SSR products, for orbits and clocks, provided by IGS (International GNSS Service) and its associate analysis centers such as CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales). CNES SSR products also enable RT-PPP with integer ambiguity resolution. In GNSS related literature, PPP with ambiguity resolution (PPP-AR) in real-time is often referred as PPP-RTK (PPP – Real Time Kinematic). PPP-WIZARD (PPP - With Integer and Zero-difference Ambiguity Resolution Demonstrator) is a software that is made available by CNES. This software is capable of performing PPP-RTK. It estimates slant ionospheric delays and other GNSS positioning parameters. Since ionospheric effects are spatially correlated by GNSS data from active networks, it is possible to model and provide ionospheric delays for any position in the network coverage area. The prior knowledge ionospheric delays can reduce positioning convergence for PPP-RTK users. Real-time ionospheric models could benefit from highly precise ionospheric delays estimated in PPP-AR. In this study, we demonstrate that ionospheric delays obtained throughout PPP-AR estimation are actu ally ionospheric observables. Ionospheric observables are biased by an order of few meters caused by the receiver hardware biases. These biases prohibit the use of PPP-WIZARD ionospheric delays to produce ionospheric models. Receiver biases correction is essential to provide ionospheric delays while using PPP-AR based ionospheric observables. In this contribution, a method was implemented to estimate and mitigate receiver hardware biases influence on slant ionospheric observables from PPP-AR. In order to assess the proposed approach, PPP-AR data from 12 GNSS stations were processed over a two-month period (March and April 2018). A comparison between IGS ionospheric products and PPP-AR based ionospheric observables corrected for receiver biases, resulted in a mean of differences of −39 cm and 51 cm standard deviation. The results are consistent with the accuracy of the IGS ionospheric products, 2–8 TECU, considering that 1 TECU is ~16 cm in L1. In another analysis, a comparison of ionospheric delays from 5 pairs of short baselines GNSS stations found an agreement of 0.001 m in mean differences with 22 cm standard deviation after receiver biases were corrected. Therefore, the proposed solution is promising and could produce high quality (1–2 TECU) slant ionospheric delays. This product can be used in a large variety of modeling approaches, since ionospheric delays after correction are unbiased. These results indicate that the proposed strategy is promising, and could benefit applications that require accuracy of 1–2 TECU (~16–32 cm in L1).