Improved method for estimating the inter-frequency satellite clock bias of triple-frequency GPS

Abstract

Considering the contribution of the hardware biases to the estimated clock errors, an improved method for estimating the satellite inter-frequency clock bias (IFCB) is presented, i.e., the difference in the satellite clock error as computed from ionospheric-free pseudorange and carrier phase observations using L1/L2 and P1/P2 versus L1/L5 and P1/P5. The IFCB is composed of a constant and a variable part. The constant part is the inter-frequency hardware bias (IFHB). It contains the satellite and receiver hardware delays and can be expressed as a function of the DCBs [DCB (P1 − P2) and DCB (P1 − P5)]. When a reference satellite is selected, the satellite IFHB can be computed but is biased by a reference satellite IFHB. This bias will not affect the utilization of IFCB in positioning since it can be absorbed by the receiver clock error. Triple-frequency observations of 30 IGS stations between June 1, 2013, and May 31, 2014, were processed to show the variations of the IFHB. The IFHB values show a long-term variation with time. When a linear and a fourth-order harmonic function are used to model the estimated IFCB, which contains contributions of the hardware delays and clock errors, the results show that 89 % of the IFCB can be corrected given the current five triple-frequency GPS satellites with the averaged fitting RMS of 1.35 cm. Five days of data are processed to test the estimated satellite clock errors using the strategy presented. The residuals of P1/P5 and L1/L5 have a STD of <0.27 m and 0.97 cm, respectively. In addition, most predicted satellite IFCBs reach an accuracy of centimeter level and its mean accuracy of 5 days is better than 7 cm.