Undifferenced Cycle Slip Estimation of Triple-Frequency BeiDou Signals with Ionosphere Prediction

Abstract

ABSTRACTWith the rapid development of BeiDou satellite navigation system (BDS), high-quality service has been provided in the Asia-Pacific region currently, which will be extended to the whole world very soon. BDS is the first Global Navigation Satellite System that all satellites broadcast the triple-frequency signals. The triple-frequency signals in theory can improve the cycle slip detection that is one of the preconditions in precise positioning by making use of carrier phase. This paper discusses the development of a cycle slip detection method for undifferenced BDS triple-frequency observations in kinematic scenario. In this method, two geometry-free extra-wide-lane combinations and one geometry-free narrow-lane (NL) combinations are employed. The key is to mitigate the between-epoch ionospheric biases in the geometry-free NL combinations. We propose to predict the ionospheric biases of current epoch by using those from its consecutive foregoing epochs. The method is tested with extensive experiments in varying observation scenarios. The results show that in case of sampling interval as small as 5 s, the between-epoch ionospheric biases can be ignored and the correct cycle slips can be determined. Meanwhile in case of lower sampling frequency, one needs to compensate the ionospheric biases of current epoch by using the predicted ionospheric biases. The presented method can correctly detect all cycle slips even if they are as small as 1 cycle.