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Combined precise orbit determination of GPS and GLONASS with ambiguity resolution

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Abstract

Precise orbit products of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are an essential precondition for precise positioning. Ambiguity resolution (AR) can enhance the orbit accuracy in precise orbit determination (POD). To improve the quality of orbits, we propose a method of combined POD for GPS and GLONASS with AR. Firstly, GLONASS wide-lane and narrow-lane fractional cycle biases (FCBs) are daily estimated. Then, by applying the estimated FCBs, GLONASS and GPS double-differenced wide-lane and narrow-lane ambiguities are successfully resolved, even for the baselines of up to several thousand kilometers. Finally, the ambiguity-resolved solutions are achieved by introducing the constraints of the resolved ambiguities into the real-valued solutions. To prove the contribution of the AR to GPS and GLONASS POD, a network including 141 sites is processed over 2018. The results show that the receiver types and firmware versions seriously affect the stability of the daily wide-lane FCBs. The fluctuation of the inter-system biases between two adjacent days is obviously larger than a half narrow-lane wavelength, causing an irregular change of the daily narrow-lane FCBs. After FCB calibration, the success rate of GLONASS can reach up to 90% over the whole year, which is at the same level compared with that of GPS. The improvements of GLONASS and GPS orbits after AR are confirmed by the orbit comparison with the International GNSS Service final products, the orbit misclosures at day boundaries and satellite laser ranging residuals. Due to some other issues, such as the GLONASS frequency-division multiple access and the high noise of observations, the improvement of GLONASS orbit is still less obvious than that of GPS orbit.

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Acknowledgements

We thank IGS, CODE and ILRS for providing GPS and GLONASS data, precise products and SLR data. The data selected from American CORS in this study is also acknowledged. This study is supported by The Major Technology Innovation Project of Hubei Province of China (2018AAA066), The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 41525014), The Natural Science Innovation Group Foundation of China (No. 41721003), The National Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 41704030) and Changjiang Scholars program. The Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) has provided the first author a scholarship which allows him to visit University of Nottingham for 2 years to research and study in the UK from November 2017. Miss Roxanne Parnham at the Sino-UK Geospatial Engineering Centre of the University of Nottingham is acknowledged for the proofreading. We thank all anonymous reviewers for their valuable, constructive and prompt comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GNSS Research Center, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Xiangdong An & Weiping Jiang

  2. Nottingham Geospatial Institute, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2TU, UK

    Xiangdong An, Xiaolin Meng & Ruijie Xi

  3. School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Hua Chen, Ruijie Xi & Qusen Chen

  4. Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment and Geodesy, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Hua Chen

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  1. Xiangdong An
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Correspondence to Weiping Jiang.

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An, X., Meng, X., Chen, H. et al. Combined precise orbit determination of GPS and GLONASS with ambiguity resolution. J Geod 93, 2585–2603 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-019-01321-2

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