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Fast ambiguity resolution for long-range reference station networks with ionospheric model constraint method

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Abstract

Ambiguity resolution (AR) speed is one of the most important performance indicators of a network RTK (real-time kinematics) system. Given the low correlation between the error sources of two stations, the effect of the atmospheric delay of double-difference observations cannot be ignored, thus making it difficult to fix the ambiguities. Ionospheric delay is one of the largest error sources affecting AR. This error source is reduced by the ionospheric-free combination with traditional methods. The AR speed of these methods is slow; generally, tens of minutes and even more are required for initialization. This study proposes an ionospheric model constraint (IMC) method to improve the AR speed. External information is not required apart from observations. The double-difference ionospheric delay is described with a regional double-difference ionospheric model, the coefficients of which are estimated as parameters together with ambiguities and tropospheric delays. Experimental results show that the initialization speed significantly improves by 72.5 % and that the AR speed for the newly risen satellites increases by 84.3 % with the proposed IMC method. Furthermore, the percentage of correctly fixed integer ambiguities after initialization increases to some extent.

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Acknowledgments

This work is funded by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2012AA12A209). In addition, it is a part of the project “Research on the Perception Technology about the Essential Factor of Chang Jiang Waterway and Its Application” (No. 2013-364-548-200), which is supported by the Chang Jiang Waterway Bureau. This work is also a part of the project “Open Service Platform of Testing BDS Application Products” supported by the Electronic Information Industry Development Fund of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China. All this support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are grateful to anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which have helped to improve the quality of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GNSS Research Center, Wuhan University, No. 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, China

    Ming Zhang, Hui Liu, Chuang Qian, Peng Zhou & Bao Shu

  2. Institute of Geomatics of Tsinghua University, No. 1 Tsinghua Yuan, Haidian District, Beijing, China

    Zhengdong Bai

  3. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, China

    Chengcheng Fan

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  1. Ming Zhang
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  2. Hui Liu
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  3. Zhengdong Bai
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  4. Chuang Qian
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  5. Chengcheng Fan
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  6. Peng Zhou
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  7. Bao Shu
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Correspondence to Hui Liu.

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Zhang, M., Liu, H., Bai, Z. et al. Fast ambiguity resolution for long-range reference station networks with ionospheric model constraint method. GPS Solut 21, 617–626 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-016-0551-z

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