Satellite Differential Code Biases Research Articles

Determining receiver biases in GPS-derived total electron content in the auroral oval and polar cap region using ionosonde measurements

Global Positioning System (GPS) total electron content (TEC) measurements, although highly precise, are often rendered inaccurate due to satellite and receiver differential code biases (DCBs). Calculated satellite DCB values are now available from a variety of sources, but receiver DCBs generally remain an undertaking of receiver operators and processing centers. A procedure for removing these receiver DCBs from GPS-derived ionospheric TEC at high latitudes, using Canadian Advanced Digital Ionosonde (CADI) measurements, is presented. Here, we will test the applicability of common numerical methods for estimating receiver DCBs in high-latitude regions and compare our CADI-calibrated GPS vertical TEC (vTEC) measurements to corresponding International GNSS Service IONEX-interpolated vTEC map data. We demonstrate that the bias values determined using the CADI method are largely independent of the topside model (exponential, Epstein, and ?-Chapman) used. We further confirm our results via comparing bias-calibrated GPS vTEC with those derived from incoherent scatter radar (ISR) measurements. These CADI method results are found to be within 1.0 TEC units (TECU) of ISR measurements. The numerical methods tested demonstrate agreement varying from within 1.6 TECU to in excess of 6.0 TECU when compared to ISR measurements.

M_DCB: Matlab code for estimating GNSS satellite and receiver differential code biases

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have been widely used to monitor variations in the earth's ionosphere by estimating total electron content (TEC) using dual-frequency observations. Differential code biases (DCBs) are one of the important error sources in estimating precise TEC from GNSS data. The International GNSS Service (IGS) Analysis Centers have routinely provided DCB estimates for GNSS satellites and IGS ground receivers, but the DCBs for regional and local network receivers are not provided. Furthermore, the DCB values of GNSS satellites or receivers are assumed to be constant over 1 day or 1 month, which is not always the case. We describe Matlab code to estimate GNSS satellite and receiver DCBs for time intervals from hours to days; the software is called M_DCB. The DCBs of GNSS satellites and ground receivers are tested and evaluated using data from the IGS GNSS network. The estimates from M_DCB show good agreement with the IGS Analysis Centers with a mean difference of less than 0.7 ns and an RMS of less than 0.4 ns, even for a single station DCB estimate.

Two-step method for the determination of the differential code biases of COMPASS satellites

The differential code bias (DCB) in satellites of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) should be precisely corrected when designing certain applications, such as ionospheric remote sensing, precise point positioning, and time transfer. In the case of COMPASS system, the data used for estimating DCB are currently only available from a very limited number of global monitoring stations. However, the current GPS/GLONASS satellite DCB estimation methods generally require a large amount of geographically well-dis- tributed data for modeling the global ionospheric vertical total electron content (TEC) and are not particularly suitable for current COMPASS use. Moreover, some satellites with unstable DCB (i.e., relatively large scatter) may affect other satellite DCB estimates through the zero-mean reference that is currently imposed on all satellites. In order to overcome the inadequacy of data sources and to reduce the impact of unsta- ble DCB, a new approach, designated IGGDCB, is developed for COMPASS satellite DCB determination. IGG stands for the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, which is located in Wuhan, China. In IGGDCB, the ionospheric vertical TEC of each individual station is independently modeled by a gener- alized triangular series function, and the satellite DCB refer- ence is selected using an iterative DCB elimination process. By comparing GPS satellite DCB estimates calculated by the IGGDCB approach based on only a handful (e.g., seven) of tracking stations against that calculated by the currently existing methods based on hundreds of tracking stations, we are able to demonstrate that the accuracies of the IGGDCB- based DCB estimates perform at the level of about 0.13 and 0.10 ns during periods of high (2001) and low (2009) solar activity, respectively. The iterative method for DCB reference selection is verified by statistical tests that take into account the day-to-day scatter and the duration that the satellites have spent in orbit. The results show that the impact of satellites with unstable DCB can be considerably reduced using the IGGDCB method. It is also confirmed that IGGDCB is not only specifically valid for COMPASS but also for all other GNSS.

A Study on the Reliability of the Ionospheric VTEC and Satellite DCB Derived from a Regional GPS Network

According to the requirement of high-precision satellite navigation, we have introduced the method for the quasi-realtime monitoring of variations of the regional ionospheric total electron content (TEC) and GPS satellite differential code bias (DCB), based on the dual-frequency carrier-phase smoothed pseudorange data obtained from a regional GPS network in China. Especially, we have studied the feasibility of retrieving DCB independently from the regional GPS networks with different sizes. For this purpose, 3 regional networks based on the countrywide GPS stations are investigated. The comparisons of the computed DCB and VTEC(vertical total electron content) with those of CODE(the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe) indicate that in order to realize a reliable quasi-realtime measurement of DCB by a regional network, there is a certain requirement on the size of the regional network, and that the relative accuracies of the quasi-realtime VTEC and DCB measured by using a Chinese GPS regional network can reach 2.0TECu and 0.25ns, respectively.

Estimation and analysis of GPS receiver differential code biases using KGN in Korean Peninsula

The total electron content (TEC) estimation by the Global Positioning System (GPS) can be seriously affected by the differential code biases (DCB), referred to as inter-frequency biases (IFB), of the satellite and receiver so that an accuracy of GPS–TEC value is dependent on the error of DCBs estimation. In this paper, we proposed the singular value decomposition (SVD) method to estimate the DCB of GPS satellites and receivers using the Korean GPS network (KGN) in South Korea. The receiver DCBs of about 49GPS reference stations in KGN were determined for the accurate estimation of the regional ionospheric TEC. They obtained from the daily solution have large biases ranging from +5 to +27ns for geomagnetic quiet days. The receiver DCB of SUWN reference station was compared with the estimates of IGS and JPL global ionosphere map (GIM). The results have shown comparatively good agreement at the level within 0.2ns. After correction of receiver DCBs and knowing the satellite DCBs, the comparison between the behavior of the estimated TEC and that of GIMs was performed for consecutive three days. We showed that there is a good agreement between KASI model and GIMs.

전리층 TEC를 이용한 GPS 수신기와 위성의 DCB 추정

We estimated the receiver and satellite differential code bias(DCB) based on the ionospheric total electron content(TEC) estimation method. The GPS network which has been operated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute(KASI) was designed to calculate TEC. The receiver and satellite DCB values were obtained from the weighted least square method with time interval for one hour. The results represented that the receiver DCB values are mostly varying within meter and are derived comparatively stable within three days. The estimated mean values of the satellite DCB show the maximum and minimum values of 4.09 nano-second(ns), -6.28ns respectively. We could detect great variations of TEC over 9 TECU difference at any time when the DCB sets were applied to TEC estimation.