Quality assessment of the affine-constrained GNSS attitude model

Abstract

By mounting two or more GNSS antennas on one platform, the attitude of the platform can be determined. Rapid, reliable integer ambiguity resolution is the key to the viability of GNSS-based attitude determination. To reduce the complexity of the search space and retain the high ambiguity resolution success rates, Teunissen developed the affine-constrained multivariate attitude model. The quality measures of the affine-constrained GNSS attitude model are addressed. When there are enough satellites in common-view visibility, the affine constraints will probably provide a marginal contribution to the quality measures. However, the strength of the model validation can be improved significantly by equipping the array with more antennas in case that there are only five common-view satellites available. Although the phase-slip minimal detectable bias measures in a roving-platform case will be worse than those in a stationary-platform case, the code-spike minimal detectable bias measures are practically independent of whether the platform is moving or stationary. The main contribution of the affine constraints is that one can now ‘trade’ satellites for receiver/antennas.