Single-station quad-constellation GNSS regional ionospheric modelling for navigation

Abstract

Conventionally, regional ionospheric models (RIMs) are established using GNSS at multiple stations. However, this will severely rely on the availability of the local GNSS observation network. In this study, a single-station quad-constellation GNSS regional ionospheric modelling (SQG-RIM) approach is proposed by establishing the RIM with the GPS/GLONASS/BDS/Galileo observations at a single station. To facilitate its application, an algorithm is further proposed to divide the entire modelling region into the core area and the non-core area. Compared with the global ionospheric map (GIM), the SQG-RIM in the core area can increase the ionospheric error correction rate by about 9%. Further, the SQG-RIM is applied to single point positioning (SPP) using a differentiated weighting scheme for different signal-passing areas. Test results indicate that the three-dimensional quad-constellation SPP accuracies are improved by 57% and 52% after applying the SQG-RIM as compared to the Klobuchar and GIM models, respectively.