Precise Point Positioning Ambiguity Resolution Research Articles

Rapid PPP ambiguity resolution using GPS+GLONASS observations

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.

Integrating multi-GNSS to improve the performance of precise point positioning

The fusion of multi-GNSS can significantly increase the number of observed satellites and optimize the spatial geometry. It can accelerate the convergence speed of precise point positioning (PPP) and shorten the time to ambiguity first-fixed solution. In this paper, BDS/GPS/GLONASS are integrated to improve the performance of ambiguity-float and -fixed PPP. GPS PPP ambiguity resolution based on fractional-cycle biases (FCBs) method is conducted and leaving BDS/GLONASS PPP ambiguities as real values. The availability and reliability of combined PPP and single-system PPP are also studied in different cut-off elevation. Data sets from multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) stations in Asia-Pacific Region are used to validate and assess the performance of BDS/GPS/GLONASS PPP. Experiment results show that the positioning accuracy of combined PPP is better than that of PPP with GPS alone for PPP hourly solutions. Compared with single system PPP, combined PPP can also reduce the convergence time both in ambiguity-float and ambiguity-fixed solution. The availability and reliability of combined PPP is better than that of GPS only PPP, when the cut off elevation is increasing to simulate urban canyon environment.

Triple-Frequency GPS Precise Point Positioning Ambiguity Resolution Using Dual-Frequency Based IGS Precise Clock Products

With the availability of the third civil signal in the Global Positioning System, triple-frequency Precise Point Positioning ambiguity resolution methods have drawn increasing attention due to significantly reduced convergence time. However, the corresponding triple-frequency based precise clock products are not widely available and adopted by applications. Currently, most precise products are generated based on ionosphere-free combination of dual-frequency L1/L2 signals, which however are not consistent with the triple-frequency ionosphere-free carrier-phase measurements, resulting in inaccurate positioning and unstable float ambiguities. In this study, a GPS triple-frequency PPP ambiguity resolution method is developed using the widely used dual-frequency based clock products. In this method, the interfrequency clock biases between the triple-frequency and dual-frequency ionosphere-free carrier-phase measurements are first estimated and then applied to triple-frequency ionosphere-free carrier-phase measurements to obtain stable float ambiguities. After this, the wide-lane L2/L5 and wide-lane L1/L2 integer property of ambiguities are recovered by estimating the satellite fractional cycle biases. A test using a sparse network is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method. The results show that the ambiguity resolution can be achieved in minutes even tens of seconds and the positioning accuracy is in decimeter level.

Rapid initialization of real-time PPP by resolving undifferenced GPS and GLONASS ambiguities simultaneously

Rapid initialization of real-time precise point positioning (PPP) has constantly been a difficult problem. Recent efforts through multi-GNSS and multi-frequency data, though beneficial indeed, have not proved sufficiently effective in reducing the initialization periods to far less than 10 min. Though this goal can be easily reached by introducing ionosphere corrections as accurate as a few centimeters, a dense reference network is required which is impractical for wi de-area applications. Leveraging the latest development of GLONASS PPP ambiguity resolution (PPP-AR) technique, we propose a composite strategy, where simultaneous GPS and GLONASS dual-frequency PPP-AR is carried out, and herein, the reliability of partial AR improves dramatically. We used 14 days of data from a German network and divided them into hourly data to test this strategy. We found that the initialization periods were shortened drastically from over 25 min when only GPS data were processed to about 6 min when GPS and GLONASS PPP-AR were accomplished simultaneously. More encouragingly, over 50% of real-time PPP solutions could be initialized successfully within 5 min through our strategy, in contrast to only 4% when only GPS data were used. We expect that our strategy can provide a promising route to overcoming the difficulty of achieving PPP initializations within a few minutes.

Ambiguity resolved precise point positioning with GPS and BeiDou

This paper focuses on the contribution of the global positioning system (GPS) and BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) observations to precise point positioning (PPP) ambiguity resolution (AR). A GPS + BDS fractional cycle bias (FCB) estimation method and a PPP AR model were developed using integrated GPS and BDS observations. For FCB estimation, the GPS + BDS combined PPP float solutions of the globally distributed IGS MGEX were first performed. When integrating GPS observations, the BDS ambiguities can be precisely estimated with less than four tracked BDS satellites. The FCBs of both GPS and BDS satellites can then be estimated from these precise ambiguities. For the GPS + BDS combined AR, one GPS and one BDS IGSO or MEO satellite were first chosen as the reference satellite for GPS and BDS, respectively, to form inner-system single-differenced ambiguities. The single-differenced GPS and BDS ambiguities were then fused by partial ambiguity resolution to increase the possibility of fixing a subset of decorrelated ambiguities with high confidence. To verify the correctness of the FCB estimation and the effectiveness of the GPS + BDS PPP AR, data recorded from about 75 IGS MGEX stations during the period of DOY 123-151 (May 3 to May 31) in 2015 were used for validation. Data were processed with three strategies: BDS-only AR, GPS-only AR and GPS + BDS AR. Numerous experimental results show that the time to first fix (TTFF) is longer than 6 h for the BDS AR in general and that the fixing rate is usually less than 35 % for both static and kinematic PPP. An average TTFF of 21.7 min and 33.6 min together with a fixing rate of 98.6 and 97.0 % in static and kinematic PPP, respectively, can be achieved for GPS-only ambiguity fixing. For the combined GPS + BDS AR, the average TTFF can be shortened to 16.9 min and 24.6 min and the fixing rate can be increased to 99.5 and 99.0 % in static and kinematic PPP, respectively. Results also show that GPS + BDS PPP AR outperforms single-system PPP AR in terms of convergence time and position accuracy.

GLONASS phase bias estimation and its PPP ambiguity resolution using homogeneous receivers

Integer ambiguity resolution (IAR) appreciably improves the position accuracy and shortens the convergence time of precise point positioning (PPP). However, while many studies are limited to GPS, t...

Integrating GPS and BDS to shorten the initialization time for ambiguity-fixed PPP

The main challenge of ambiguity resolution in precise point positioning (PPP) is that it requires 30 min or more to succeed in the first fixing of ambiguities. With the full operation of the BeiDou (BDS) satellite system in East Asia, it is worthwhile to investigate the performance of GPS + BDS PPP ambiguity resolution, especially the improvements of the initial fixing time and ambiguity-fixing rate compared to GPS-only solutions. We estimated the wide- and narrow-lane fractional-cycle biases (FCBs) for BDS with a regional network, and PPP ambiguity resolution was carried out at each station to assess the contribution of BDS. The across-satellite single-difference (ASSD) GPS + BDS combined ambiguity-fixed PPP model was used, in which the ASSD is applied within each system. We used a two-day data set from 48 stations. For kinematic PPP, the percentage of fixing within 10 min for GPS only (Model A) is 17.6 %, when adding IGSO and MEO of BDS (Model B), the percentage improves significantly to 42.8 %, whereas it is only 23.2 % if GEO is added (Model C) due to the low precision of GEO orbits. For static PPP, the fixing percentage is 32.9, 53.3 and 28.0 % for Model A, B and C, respectively. In order to overcome the limitation of the poor precision of GEO satellites, we also used a small network of 10 stations to analyze the contribution of GEO satellites to kinematic PPP. We took advantage of the fact that for stations of a small network the GEO satellites appear at almost the same direction, such that the GEO orbit error can be absorbed by its FCB estimates. The results show that the percentage of fixing improves from 39.5 to 57.7 % by adding GEO satellites.

Improved PPP ambiguity resolution by COES FCB estimation

Precise point positioning (PPP) integer ambiguity resolution is able to significantly improve the positioning accuracy with the correction of fractional cycle biases (FCBs) by shortening the time to first fix (TTFF) of ambiguities. When satellite orbit products are adopted to estimate the satellite FCB corrections, the narrow-lane (NL) FCB corrections will be contaminated by the orbit’s line-of-sight (LOS) errors which subsequently affect ambiguity resolution (AR) performance, as well as positioning accuracy. To effectively separate orbit errors from satellite FCBs, we propose a cascaded orbit error separation (COES) method for the PPP implementation. Instead of using only one direction-independent component in previous studies, the satellite NL improved FCB corrections are modeled by one direction-independent component and three directional-dependent components per satellite in this study. More specifically, the direction-independent component assimilates actual FCBs, whereas the directional-dependent components are used to assimilate the orbit errors. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, GPS measurements from a regional and a global network are processed with the IGSReal-time service (RTS), IGS rapid (IGR) products and predicted orbits with $$>$$ 10 cm 3D root mean square (RMS) error. The improvements by the proposed FCB estimation method are validated in terms of ambiguity fractions after applying FCB corrections and positioning accuracy. The numerical results confirm that the obtained FCBs using the proposed method outperform those by conventional method. The RMS of ambiguity fractions after applying FCB corrections is reduced by 13.2 %. The position RMSs in north, east and up directions are reduced by 30.0, 32.0 and 22.0 % on average.

GLONASS fractional-cycle bias estimation across inhomogeneous receivers for PPP ambiguity resolution

The key issue to enable precise point positioning with ambiguity resolution (PPP-AR) is to estimate fractional-cycle biases (FCBs), which mainly relate to receiver and satellite hardware biases, over a network of reference stations. While this has been well achieved for GPS, FCB estimation for GLONASS is difficult because (1) satellites do not share the same frequencies as a result of Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) signals; (2) and even worse, pseudorange hardware biases of receivers vary in an irregular manner with manufacturers, antennas, domes, firmware, etc., which especially complicates GLONASS PPP-AR over inhomogeneous receivers. We propose a general approach where external ionosphere products are introduced into GLONASS PPP to estimate precise FCBs that are less impaired by pseudorange hardware biases of diverse receivers to enable PPP-AR. One month of GLONASS data at about 550 European stations were processed. From an exemplary network of 51 inhomogeneous receivers, including four receiver types with various antennas and spanning about 800 km in both longitudinal and latitudinal directions, we found that 92.4 % of all fractional parts of GLONASS wide-lane ambiguities agree well within $$\pm $$ 0.15 cycles with a standard deviation of 0.09 cycles if global ionosphere maps (GIMs) are introduced, compared to only 51.7 % within $$\pm $$ 0.15 cycles and a larger standard deviation of 0.22 cycles otherwise. Hourly static GLONASS PPP-AR at 40 test stations can reach position estimates of about 1 and 2 cm in RMS from ground truth for the horizontal and vertical components, respectively, which is comparable to hourly GPS PPP-AR. Integrated GLONASS and GPS PPP-AR can further achieve an RMS of about 0.5 cm in horizontal and 1–2 cm in vertical components. We stress that the performance of GLONASS PPP-AR across inhomogeneous receivers depends on the accuracy of ionosphere products. GIMs have a modest accuracy of only 2–8 TECU (Total Electron Content Unit) in vertical which confines PPP-AR to an approximately $$800\times 800$$ km area in Europe. We expect that a regional ionosphere map with a better than 1 TECU accuracy is likely to improve the GLONASS PPP-AR efficiency.

Improved PPP Ambiguity Resolution Considering the Stochastic Characteristics of Atmospheric Corrections from Regional Networks.

With the increased availability of regional reference networks, Precise Point Positioning (PPP) can achieve fast ambiguity resolution (AR) and precise positioning by assimilating the satellite fractional cycle biases (FCBs) and atmospheric corrections derived from these networks. In such processing, the atmospheric corrections are usually treated as deterministic quantities. This is however unrealistic since the estimated atmospheric corrections obtained from the network data are random and furthermore the interpolated corrections diverge from the realistic corrections. This paper is dedicated to the stochastic modelling of atmospheric corrections and analyzing their effects on the PPP AR efficiency. The random errors of the interpolated corrections are processed as two components: one is from the random errors of estimated corrections at reference stations, while the other arises from the atmospheric delay discrepancies between reference stations and users. The interpolated atmospheric corrections are then applied by users as pseudo-observations with the estimated stochastic model. Two data sets are processed to assess the performance of interpolated corrections with the estimated stochastic models. The results show that when the stochastic characteristics of interpolated corrections are properly taken into account, the successful fix rate reaches 93.3% within 5 min for a medium inter-station distance network and 80.6% within 10 min for a long inter-station distance network.

Generating GPS satellite fractional cycle bias for ambiguity-fixed precise point positioning

With the development of precise point positioning (PPP), the School of Geodesy and Geomatics (SGG) at Wuhan University is now routinely producing GPS satellite fractional cycle bias (FCB) products with open access for worldwide PPP users to conduct ambiguity-fixed PPP solution. We provide a brief theoretical background of PPP and present the strategies and models to compute the FCB products. The practical realization of the two-step (wide-lane and narrow-lane) FCB estimation scheme is described in detail. With GPS measurements taken in various situations, i.e., static, dynamic, and on low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, the quality of FCB estimation and the effectiveness of PPP ambiguity resolution (AR) are evaluated. The comparison with CNES FCBs indicated that our FCBs had a good consistency with the CNES ones. For wide-lane FCB, almost all the differences of the two products were within ±0.05 cycles. For narrow-lane FCB, 87.8 % of the differences were located between ±0.05 cycles, and 97.4 % of them were located between ±0.075 cycles. The experimental results showed that, compared with conventional ambiguity-float PPP, the averaged position RMS of static PPP can be improved from (3.6, 1.4, 3.6) to (2.0, 1.0, 2.7) centimeters for ambiguity-fixed PPP. The average accuracy improvement in the east, north, and up components reached 44.4, 28.6, and 25.0 %, respectively. A kinematic, ambiguity-fixed PPP test with observation of 80 min achieved a position accuracy of better than 5 cm at the one-sigma level in all three coordinate components. Compared with the results of ambiguity-float, kinematic PPP, the positioning biases of ambiguity-fixed PPP were improved by about 78.2, 20.8, and 65.1 % in east, north, and up. The RMS of LEO PPP test was improved by about 23.0, 37.0, and 43.0 % for GRACE-A and GRACE-B in radial, tangential, and normal directions when AR was applied to the same data set. These results demonstrated that the SGG FCB products can be produced with high quality for users anywhere around the world to carry out ambiguity-fixed PPP solutions.

BeiDou phase bias estimation and its application in precise point positioning with triple-frequency observable

At present, the BeiDou system (BDS) enables the practical application of triple-frequency observable in the Asia-Pacific region, of many possible benefits from the additional signal; this study focuses on exploiting the contribution of zero difference (ZD) ambiguity resolution (AR) to the precise point positioning (PPP). A general modeling strategy for multi-frequency PPP AR is presented, in which, the least squares ambiguity decorrelation adjustment (LAMBDA) method is employed in ambiguity fixing based on the full variance-covariance ambiguity matrix generated from the raw data processing model. Because of the reliable fixing of BDS L1 ambiguity faces more difficulty, the LAMBDA method with partial ambiguity fixing is proposed to enable the independent and instantaneous resolution of extra wide-lane (EWL) and wide-lane (WL). This mechanism of sequential ambiguity fixing is demonstrated for resolving ZD satellite phase bias and performing triple-frequency PPP AR with two reference station networks with a typical baseline of up to 400 and 800 km, respectively. Tests show that about $$90\,\%$$ of the EWL and WL phase bias of BDS has a consistency of better than 0.1 cycle, and this value decreases to $$<$$ 80 % for L1 phase bias for Experiment I, while all the solutions of Experiment II have a similar RMS of about 0.12 cycles. In addition, the repeatability of the daily mean phase bias agree to 0.093 cycles and 0.095 cycles for EWL and WL on average, which is much smaller than 0.20 cycles of L1. To assess the improvement of fixed PPP brought by applying the third frequency signal as well as the above phase bias, various ambiguity fixing strategy are considered in the numerical demonstration. It is shown that the impact of the additional signal is almost negligible when only float solution involved. It is also shown that by fixing EWL and WL together, as opposed to the single ambiguity fixing, will leads to an improvement in PPP accuracy by about $$20.6\,\%$$ on average. Attributed to the efficient resolution of EWL $$+$$ WL within about 2 min in Experiment I, the 0.5 m level positioning can be achieved in 10 min for both horizontal and vertical, compared to 50 min for horizontal and 30 min for vertical by the NONE/EWL/WL fixed solution. While, for Experiment II, the improvement in the convergence can only be seen for the horizontal as the TTFF takes about 40 min for EWL and WL to be resolved.

Ionospheric effects in uncalibrated phase delay estimation and ambiguity-fixed PPP based on raw observable model

Zero-difference (ZD) ambiguity resolution (AR) reveals the potential to further improve the performance of precise point positioning (PPP). Traditionally, PPP AR is achieved by Melbourne–Wubbena and ionosphere-free combinations in which the ionosphere effect are removed. To exploit the ionosphere characteristics, PPP AR with L1 and L2 raw observable has also been developed recently. In this study, we apply this new approach in uncalibrated phase delay (UPD) generation and ZD AR and compare it with the traditional model. The raw observable processing strategy treats each ionosphere delay as an unknown parameter. In this manner, both a priori ionosphere correction model and its spatio-temporal correlation can be employed as constraints to improve the ambiguity resolution. However, theoretical analysis indicates that for the wide-lane (WL) UPD retrieved from L1/L2 ambiguities to benefit from this raw observable approach, high precision ionosphere correction of better than 0.7 total electron content unit (TECU) is essential. This conclusion is then confirmed with over 1 year data collected at about 360 stations. Firstly, both global and regional ionosphere model were generated and evaluated, the results of which demonstrated that, for large-scale ionosphere modeling, only an accuracy of 3.9 TECU can be achieved on average for the vertical delays, and this accuracy can be improved to about 0.64 TECU when dense network is involved. Based on these ionosphere products, WL/narrow-lane (NL) UPDs are then extracted with the raw observable model. The NL ambiguity reveals a better stability and consistency compared to traditional approach. Nonetheless, the WL ambiguity can be hardly improved even constrained with the high spatio-temporal resolution ionospheric corrections. By applying both these approaches in PPP-RTK, it is interesting to find that the traditional model is more efficient in AR as evidenced by the shorter time to first fix, while the three-dimensional positioning accuracy of the RAW model outperforms the combination model by about \(7.9\,\%\). This reveals that, with the current ionosphere models, there is actually no optimal strategy for the dual-frequency ZD ambiguity resolution, and the combination approach and raw approach each has merits and demerits.

Instantaneous ambiguity resolution for URTK and its seamless transition with PPP-AR

We extend the current Undifferenced network RTK (URTK) approaches by additionally using P1/CA augmentation information from reference stations. P1/CA augmentation information can shorten the convergence time and help to fix the ionosphere-free combination ambiguities in several epochs. Instantaneous and centimeter-level positioning solutions can be achieved for rovers within the coverage of regional reference network. Also, we develop an approach for seamless transition between URTK and precise point positioning with ambiguity resolution (PPP-AR) and present a new scheme to provide URTK service. Therefore, a service for a large number of rovers can be easily realized in real-time data communication for ambiguity fixing. In addition, the period when augmentation information from a particular reference station is not available can be bridged with the help of PPP-AR. Rovers can experience more operational time with fewer interruptions, which are difficult tasks for current URTK and Network Real-Time Kinematic services. More importantly, with this new scheme, URTK and PPP-AR services can be integrated into a unique PPP-AR system. The obtained convergence time only depends on whether or not the rover is receiving the regional augmentation information.

High-Rate GPS Seismology Using Real-Time Precise Point Positioning With Ambiguity Resolution

With the availability of real-time high-rate GPS observations and precise satellite orbit and clock products, the interest in the real-time precise point positioning (PPP) technique has greatly increased to construct displacement waveforms and to invert for source parameters of earthquakes in real time. Furthermore, PPP ambiguity resolution approaches, developed in the recent years, overcome the accuracy limitation of the standard PPP float solution and achieve comparable accuracy with relative positioning. In this paper, we introduce the real-time PPP service system and the key techniques for real-time PPP ambiguity resolution. We assess the performance of the ambiguity-fixed PPP in real-time scenarios and confirm that positioning accuracy in terms of root mean square of 1.0–1.5 cm can be achieved in horizontal components. For the 2011 Tohoku-Oki (Japan) and the 2010 El Mayor–Cucapah (Mexico) earthquakes, the displacement waveforms estimated from ambiguity-fixed PPP and those provided by the accelerometer instrumentation are consistent in the dynamic component within few centimeters. The PPP fixed solution not only can improve the accuracy of coseismic displacements but also provides a reliable recovery of earthquake magnitude and of the fault slip distribution in real time.

Investigating the Impact of Random and Systematic Errors on GPS Precise Point Positioning Ambiguity Resolution

Precise Point Positioning (PPP) is an increasingly recognized precisely the GPS/GNSS positioning technique. In order to improve the accuracy of PPP, the error sources in PPP measurements should be reduced as much as possible and the ambiguities should be correctly resolved. The correct ambiguity resolution requires a careful control of residual errors that are normally categorized into random and systematic errors. To understand effects from two categorized errors on the PPP ambiguity resolution, those two GPS datasets are simulated by generating in locations in South Korea (denoted as SUWN) and Hong Kong (PolyU). Both simulation cases are studied for each dataset; the first case is that all the satellites are affected by systematic and random errors, and the second case is that only a few satellites are affected. In the first case with random errors only, when the magnitude of random errors is increased, L1 ambiguities have a much higher chance to be incorrectly fixed. However, the size of ambiguity error is not exactly proportional to the magnitude of random error. Satellite geometry has more impacts on the L1 ambiguity resolution than the magnitude of random errors. In the first case when all the satellites have both random and systematic errors, the accuracy of fixed ambiguities is considerably affected by the systematic error. A pseudorange systematic error of 5 cm is the much more detrimental to ambiguity resolutions than carrier phase systematic error of 2 mm. In the 2 nd case when only a portion of satellites have systematic and random errors, the L1 ambiguity resolution in PPP can be still corrected. The number of allowable satellites varies from stations to stations, depending on the geometry of satellites. Through extensive simulation tests under different schemes, this paper sheds light on how the PPP ambiguity resolution (more precisely L1 ambiguity resolution) is affected by the characteristics of the residual errors in PPP observations. The numerical examples recall the PPP data analysts that how accurate the error correction models must achieve in order to get all the ambiguities resolved correctly.

An impact analysis of arc length on orbit prediction and clock estimation for PPP ambiguity resolution

Real-time precise orbit and clock products are crucial for real-time high-precision precise point positioning (PPP). The key for precise orbit prediction is to precisely determine the initial conditions (satellite position, velocity at the initial epoch) and the solar radiation pressure (SRP) parameters using an arc of known precise orbits. The optimal arc length will be investigated for precise orbit prediction, with which the high-accuracy satellite clocks can be estimated. The orbit prediction accuracies with different arc lengths and conditions over time are also investigated. The results indicate that the predicted orbit accuracy is governed by the SRP parameters. In addition, the predicted orbits and estimated clocks are evaluated quantitatively with respect to PPP solutions during in and out of eclipses seasons, based on which the optimal arc length is identified. The numerical results show that high-accuracy orbital prediction can be achieved using an arc length between 36 and 48 h and generally an arc length of 42 h is considered to be optimal. With this optimal arc length, the estimated clock accuracy is 0.048 and 0.122 ns for a prediction interval of 6 and 24 h, respectively. The average PPP ambiguity fix-rates with a prediction interval of 6 h are 80.2 and 84.7 % over an observation period of 30 min and 1 h, respectively.

A new seismogeodetic approach applied to GPS and accelerometer observations of the 2012 Brawley seismic swarm: Implications for earthquake early warning

The 26 August 2012 Brawley seismic swarm of hundreds of events ranging from M1.4 to M5.5 in the Salton Trough, California provides a unique data set to investigate a new seismogeodetic approach that combines Global Positioning System (GPS) and accelerometer observations to estimate displacement and velocity waveforms. First in simulated real‐time mode, we analyzed 1–5 Hz GPS data collected by 17 stations fully encircling the swarm zone at near‐source distances up to about 40 km using precise point positioning with ambiguity resolution (PPP‐AR). We used a reference network of North American GPS stations well outside the region of deformation to estimate fractional‐cycle biases and satellite clock parameters, which were then combined with ultrarapid orbits from the International GNSS Service to estimate positions during the Brawley seismic swarm. Next, we estimated seismogeodetic displacements and velocities from GPS phase and pseudorange observations and 100–200 Hz accelerations collected at three pairs of GPS and seismic stations in close proximity using a new tightly coupled Kalman filter approach as an extension of the PPP‐AR process. We can clearly discern body waves in the velocity waveforms, including P‐wave arrivals not detectable with the GPS‐only approach for earthquake magnitudes as low as Mw 4.6 and significant static offsets for magnitudes as low as Mw 5.4. Our study shows that GPS networks upgraded with strong motion accelerometers can provide new information for improved understanding of the earthquake rupture process and be of critical value in creating a robust early warning system for any earthquake of societal significance.

Assessment of correct fixing rate for precise point positioning ambiguity resolution on a global scale

Ambiguity resolution (AR) for a single receiver has been a popular topic in Global Positioning System (GPS) recently. Ambiguity-resolution methods for precise point positioning (PPP) have been well documented in recent years, demonstrating that it can improve the accuracy of PPP. However, users are often concerned about the reliability of ambiguity-fixed PPP solution in practical applications. If ambiguities are fixed to wrong integers, large errors would be introduced into position estimates. In this paper, we aim to assess the correct fixing rate (CFR), i.e., number of ambiguities correctly fixing to the total number of ambiguities correctly and incorrectly fixing, for PPP user ambiguity resolution on a global scale. A practical procedure is presented to evaluate the CFR of PPP user ambiguity resolution. GPS data of the first 3 days in each month of 2010 from about 390 IGS stations are used for experiments. Firstly, we use GPS data collected from about 320 IGS stations to estimate global single-differenced (SD) wide-lane and narrow-lane satellite uncalibrated phase delays (UPDs). The quality of UPDs is evaluated. We found that wide-lane UPD estimates have a rather small standard deviation (Std) between 0.003 and 0.004 cycles while most of Std of narrow-lane estimates are from 0.01 to 0.02 cycles. Secondly, many experiments have been conducted to investigate the CFR of integer ambiguity resolution we can achieve under different conditions, including reference station density, observation session length and the ionospheric activity. The results show that the CFR of PPP can exceed 98.0 % with only 1 h of observations for most user stations. No obvious correlation between the CFR and the reference station density is found. Therefore, nearly homogeneous CFR can be achieved in PPP AR for global users. At user end, higher CFR could be achieved with longer observations. The average CFR for 30-min, 1-h, 2-h and 4-h observation is 92.3, 98.2, 99.5 and 99.7 %, respectively. In order to get acceptable CFR, 1 h is a recommended minimum observation time. Furthermore, the CFR of PPP can be affected by diurnal variation and geomagnetic latitude variation in the ionosphere. During one day at the hours when rapid ionospheric variations occur or in low geomagnetic latitude regions where equatorial electron density irregularities are produced relatively frequently, a significant degradation of the CFR is demonstrated.

Improvement of PPP-inferred tropospheric estimates by integer ambiguity resolution

Integer ambiguity resolution in Precise Point Positioning (PPP) can improve positioning accuracy and reduce convergence time. The decoupled clock model proposed by Collins (2008) has been used to facilitate integer ambiguity resolution in PPP, and research has been conducted to assess the model’s potential to improve positioning accuracy and reduce positioning convergence time. In particular, the biggest benefits have been identified for the positioning solutions within short observation periods such as one hour. However, there is little work reported about the model’s potential to improve the estimation of the tropospheric parameter within short observation periods. This paper investigates the effect of PPP ambiguity resolution on the accuracy of the tropospheric estimates within one hour.The tropospheric estimates with float and fixed ambiguities within one hour are compared to two external references. The first reference is the International GNSS Service (IGS) final troposphere product based on the PPP technique. The second reference is the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) radio occultation (RO) event based on the atmospheric profiles along the signal travel path. A comparison among ten co-located ground-based GPS and space-based RO troposphere zenith path delays shows that the mean bias of the troposphere estimates with float ambiguities can be significantly reduced from 30.1 to 17.0mm when compared to the IGS troposphere product and from 36.3 to 19.7mm when compared to the COSMIC RO. The root mean square (RMS) accuracy improvement of the tropospheric parameters by the ambiguity resolution is 33.3% when compared to the IGS products and 44.3% when compared to the COSMIC RO. All these improvements are achieved within one hour, which indicates the promising prospect of adopting PPP integer ambiguity resolution for time-critical applications such as typhoon prediction.