Rapid PPP ambiguity resolution using GPS+GLONASS observations

Abstract

Integer ambiguity resolution (IAR) in precise point positioning (PPP) using GPS observations has been well studied. The main challenge remaining is that the first ambiguity fixing takes about 30 min. This paper presents improvements made using GPS+GLONASS observations, especially improvements in the initial fixing time and correct fixing rate compared with GPS-only solutions. As a result of the frequency division multiple access strategy of GLONASS, there are two obstacles to GLONASS PPP-IAR: first and most importantly, there is distinct code inter-frequency bias (IFB) between satellites, and second, simultaneously observed satellites have different wavelengths. To overcome the problem resulting from GLONASS code IFB, we used a network of homogeneous receivers for GLONASS wide-lane fractional cycle bias (FCB) estimation and wide-lane ambiguity resolution. The integer satellite clock of the GPS and GLONASS was then estimated with the wide-lane FCB products. The effect of the different wavelengths on FCB estimation and PPP-IAR is discussed in detail. We used a 21-day data set of 67 stations, where data from 26 stations were processed to generate satellite wide-lane FCBs and integer clocks and the other 41 stations were selected as users to perform PPP-IAR. We found that GLONASS FCB estimates are qualitatively similar to GPS FCB estimates. Generally, 98.8% of a posteriori residuals of wide-lane ambiguities are within $$\pm 0.25$$ cycles for GPS, and 96.6% for GLONASS. Meanwhile, 94.5 and 94.4% of narrow-lane residuals are within 0.1 cycles for GPS and GLONASS, respectively. For a critical value of 2.0, the correct fixing rate for kinematic PPP is only 75.2% for GPS alone and as large as 98.8% for GPS+GLONASS. The fixing percentage for GPS alone is only 11.70 and 46.80% within 5 and 10 min, respectively, and improves to 73.71 and 95.83% when adding GLONASS. Adding GLONASS thus improves the fixing percentage significantly for a short time span. We also used global ionosphere maps (GIMs) to assist the wide-lane carrier-phase combination to directly fix the wide-lane ambiguity. Employing this method, the effect of the code IFB is eliminated and numerical results show that GLONASS FCB estimation can be performed across heterogeneous receivers. However, because of the relatively low accuracy of GIMs, the fixing percentage of GIM-aided GPS+GLONASS PPP ambiguity resolution is very low. We expect better GIM accuracy to enable rapid GPS+GLONASS PPP-IAR with heterogeneous receivers.