Performance analysis of real-time and post-mission kinematic precise point positioning in marine environments

This article focuses on the performance analysis of both real-time and post-mission kinematic precise point positioning(PPP)in challenging marine environments.For this purpose,a real dynamic experiment lasting 6 h was carried out on a lake dam in?orum City of Turkey.While the kinematic test was continuing,the real-time PPP coordinates were obtained for each measurement epoch with a commercial real-time PPP(RT-PPP)service,namely the Trimble Center Point RTX.Then the post-mission PPP(PM-PPP)coordinates were calculated by using Multi-GNSS data and the Multi-GNSS Experiment(MGEX)precise products.The kinematic RT-PPP and PM-PPP results showed that the PPP coordinates were consistent with the relative solution at centimetre and decimetre level in horizontal and height components,respectively.This study implies that PPP technique is a powerful tool for highly accurate positioning in both real-time and post-mission modes,even for dynamic applications in harsh environments.

高频GNSS形变波的震相识别：模拟实验与实例分析

高频GNSS震时形变波震相及识别是GNSS地震学的重要内容.在实时数据处理基础上,本文利用振动台的高频GNSS观测实验,并结合近期部分大震的高频GNSS形变波震相特征进行研究.数据处理结果表明,实时处理与事后处理的精度在同一量级,且与采样率无关.通过与同址观测强震仪和地震计记录的对比及特定震相的频谱分析,发现高频GNSS可完整记录P波、S波、Love波及Rayleigh波震相,影响震相记录的主要因素是GNSS定位精度与震级,而仅当震中距很小时,采样率将产生一定影响.研究结果得出:基于地震波传播规律,利用高频GNSS台阵记录的形变波空间分段特征,结合震相运动轨迹及其他地震波记录,可实现实时高频GNSS形变波的震相识别.

高频GNSS实时地震学与地震预警研究现状

为实现从注重灾后救助向注重灾前预防转变,如何提高地震灾害监测预警和风险防范能力成为我们关注的重点.本文给出了国际上GNSS位移记录、强震动加速度记录、测震速度记录在地震预警中的应用现状,并总结了各自的特点,归纳出围绕高频GNSS地震学在震级与破裂过程实时反演中的几个需要进一步研究的关键问题:(1)引入北斗系统,基于高频GNSS(GPS/BDS)双系统的实时位移解算方法来提高实时单站位移解算精度,使实时解算精度达到厘米级;(2)开展强震仪加速度记录基线偏移校正研究,弥补地震近场GNSS站密度不足问题;(3)强震仪加速度记录与GNSS位移记录特点不同,开展强震仪加速度数据与GNSS位移数据实时融合处理研究,快速获得包含丰富地震形变和速率的波形数据;(4)测震学方法可快速估算震级,但是在强震发生时会出现震级饱和现象,造成震级估算偏低.需要开展基于GNSS位移时间序列的多种方法相结合的实时震级估算方法研究,通过与地震学方法比较和结合,来得到精度高、计算快的震级估值算法;(5)基于高频GNSS、断层初始模型快速选取、断层尺度、参数自适应调整是快速判断断层破裂方向的基础,在断层破裂过程自适应准实时反演算法方面需要进一步加强.通过国内外研究现状调研、分析,表明基于高频GNSS地震学的震级快速确定、震源破裂过程准实时反演算法的发展将对我国地震预警系统从“二网融合”到“三网融合”提供坚实的技术支撑.

GNSS gyroscopes:determination of angular velocity and acceleration with very high-rate GNSS

Although global navigation satellite systems(GNSS)have been routinely applied to determine attitudes,there exists no literature on determining angular velocity and/or angular acceleration from GNSS.Motivated by the invention of computerized accelerometers of the correspondence author and following the success of accurately recovering translational velocity and acceleration waveforms from very high-rate GNSS precise positioning by Xu and his collaborators in 2021,we propose the concept of GNSS gyroscopes and reconstruct angular velocity and acceleration from very high-rate GNSS attitudes by applying regularization under the criterion of minimum mean squared errors.The major results from the experiments can be summarized in the following:(i)angular velocity and acceleration waveforms computed by applying the difference methods to high-rate GNSS attitudes are too noisy and can be physically not meaningful and numerically incorrect.The same can be said about inertial measurement unit(IMU)attitudes,if IMU gyros are not of very high accuracy;(ii)regularization is successfully applied to reconstruct the high-rate angular velocity and acceleration waveforms from 50 Hz GNSS attitudes and significantly outperforms the difference methods,validating the proposed concept of GNSS gyroscopes.By comparing the angular velocity and acceleration results by using the difference methods and regularization,we find that the peak values of angular velocity and acceleration by regularization are much smaller by a maximum factor of 1.57 in the angular velocity to a maximum factor of 8662.53 times in the angular acceleration in the case of high-rate GNSS,and by a maximum factor of 1.26 in the angular velocity to a maximum factor of 2819.85 times in the angular acceleration in the case of IMU,respectively;and(iii)the IMU attitudes apparently lead to better regularized angular velocity and acceleration waveforms than the high-rate GNSS attitudes,which can well be explained by the fact that the former is of better accuracy than the latter.As a result,to suppress the significant amplification of noise in GNSS attitudes,larger regularization parameters have to be chosen for the high-rate GNSS attitudes,resulting in smaller peak angular accelerations by a maximum factor of 37.55 percent in the angular velocity to a maximum factor of 6.20 times in the angular acceleration in comparison of the corresponding IMU results.Nevertheless,the regularized angular acceleration waveforms for both GNSS and IMU look more or less similar in pattern or waveform shape.

A square root information filter for multi-GNSS real-time precise clock estimation

Real-time satellite orbit and clock estimations are the prerequisite for Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)real-time precise positioning services.To meet the high-rate update requirement of satellite clock corrections,the computational efficiency is a key factor and a challenge due to the rapid development of multi-GNSS constellations.The Square Root Information Filter(SRIF)is widely used in real-time GNSS data processing thanks to its high numerical stability and computational efficiency.In real-time clock estimation,the outlier detection and elimination are critical to guarantee the precision and stability of the product but could be time-consuming.In this study,we developed a new quality control procedure including the three standard steps:i.e.,detection,identification,and adaption,for real-time data processing of huge GNSS networks.Effort is made to improve the computational efficiency by optimizing the algorithm to provide only the essential information required in the processing,so that it can be applied in real-time and high-rate estimation of satellite clocks.The processing procedure is implemented in the PANDA(Positioning and Navigation Data Analyst)software package and evaluated in the operational generation of real-time GNSS orbit and clock products.We demonstrated that the new algorithm can efficiently eliminate outliers,and a clock precision of 0.06 ns,0.24 ns,0.06 ns,and 0.11 ns can be achieved for the GPS,GLONASS,Galileo,and BDS-2 IGSO/MEO satellites,respectively.The computation time per epoch is about 2 to 3 s depending on the number of existing outliers.Overall,the algorithm can satisfy the IGS real-time clock estimation in terms of both the computational efficiency and product quality.

Quality monitoring of real-time GNSS precise positioning service system

The Real-Time Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)Precise Positioning Service(RTPPS)is recognized as the most promising system by providing precise satellite orbit and clock correc-tions for users to achieve centimeter-level positioning with a stand-alone receiver in real-time.Although the products are available with high accuracy almost all the time,they may occasionally suffer from unexpected significant biases,which consequently degrades the positioning perfor-mance.Therefore,quality monitoring at the system-level has become more and more crucial for providing a reliable GNSS service.In this paper,we propose a method for the monitoring of realtime satellite orbit and clock products using a monitoring station network based on the Quality Control(QC)theory.The satellites with possible biases are first detected based on the outliers identified by Precise Point Positioning(PPP)in the monitoring station network.Then,the corresponding orbit and clock parameters with temporal constraints are introduced and esti-mated through the sequential Least Square(LS)estimator and the corresponding Instantaneous User Range Errors(IUREs)can be determined.A quality indicator is calculated based on the IUREs in the monitoring network and compared with a pre-defined threshold.The quality monitoring method is experimentally evaluated by monitoring the real-time orbit and clock products generated by GeoForschungsZentrum(GFZ),Potsdam.The results confirm that the problematic satellites can be detected accurately and effectively with missed detection rate 4×10^(-6) and false alarm rate 1:2×10^(-5).Considering the quality alarms,the PPP results in terms of RMS of positioning differences with respect to the International GNSS Service(IGS)weekly solution in the north,east and up directions can be improved by 12%,10%and 27%,respectively.

Near real-time modeling of global ionospheric vertical total electron content using hourly IGS data

The International GNSS Service(IGS) has been providing reliable Global Ionospheric Maps(GIMs) since 1998. The Ionosphere Associate Analysis Centers(IAACs) model the global ionospheric Total Electron Content(TEC) and generate the daily GIM products within the context of the IGS. However, the rapid and final daily GIM products have a latency of at least one day and one week or so, respectively. This limits the value of GIM products in real-time GNSS applications.We propose and develop an approach for near real-time modeling of global ionospheric TEC by using the hourly IGS data. We perform an experiment in a real operating environment to generate near real-time GIM(named BUHG) products for more than two years. Final daily GIM products,Precise Point Positioning(PPP) based VTEC resources, and JASON-3 Vertical TEC(VTEC) measurements are collected for testing the performance of BUHG. The results show that the performance of BUHG is very close to that of the daily GIM products. Also, there is good agreement between BUHG and PPP-derived VTEC as well as with JASON-3 VTEC. It is possible that BUHG would be further improved with an increase in available hourly GNSS data.

An improved GNSS ambiguity best integer equivariant estimation method with Laplacian distribution for urban low-cost RTK positioning

The integer least squares(ILS)estimation is commonly used for carrier phase ambiguity resolution(AR).More recently,the best integer equivariant(BIE)estimation has also attracted an attention for complex application scenarios,which exhibits higher reliability by a weighted fusion of integer candidates.However,traditional BIE estimation with Gaussian distribution(GBIE)faces challenges in fully utilizing the advantages of BIE for urban low-cost positioning,mainly due to the presence of outliers and unmodeled errors.To this end,an improved BIE estimation method with Laplacian distribution(LBIE)is proposed,and several key issues are discussed,including the weight function of LBIE,determination of the candidates included based on the OIA test,and derivation of the variance of LBIE solutions for reliability evaluation.The results show that the proposed LBIE method has the positioning accuracy similar to the BIE using multivariate t-distribution(TBIE),and significantly outperforms the ILS-PAR and GBIE methods.In an urban expressway test with a Huawei Mate40 smartphone,the LBIE method has positioning errors of less than 0.5 m in three directions and obtains over 50%improvements compared to the ILS-PAR and GBIE methods.In an urban canyon test with a low-cost receiver STA8100 produced by STMicroelectronics,the positioning accuracy of LBIE in three directions is 0.112 m,0.107 m,and 0.252 m,respectively,with improvements of 17.6%,27.2%,and 26.1%compared to GBIE,and 23.3%,28.2%,and 30.6%compared to ILS-PAR.Moreover,its computational time increases by 30–40%compared to ILS-PAR and is approximately half of that using TBIE.

GNSS异步RTK定位效果分析

分析了GNSS(global navigation satellite system)卫星钟差在通信延迟内变化的量级,同时对比分析了不同系统异步RTK(real-time kinematic)定位精度。实验结果表明,与传统RTK模型相比,在考虑通信延迟内钟差变化的影响时,BDS/Galileo/GPS的RTK定位精度明显提高,GLONASS在通信延迟较低时无明显变化。其中,对于同样的通信延迟,BDS/Galileo的异步RTK定位精度明显优于GPS/GLONASS。

GNSS smartphones positioning: advances, challenges, opportunities, and future perspectives

Starting from 2016,the raw Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)measurements can be extracted from the Android Nougat(or later)operating systems.Since then,GNSS smartphone positioning has been given much attention.A high number of related publications indicates the importance of the research in this field,as it has been doing in recent years.Due to the cost-effectiveness of the GNSS smartphones,they can be employed in a wide variety of applications such as cadastral surveys,mapping surveying applications,vehicle and pedestrian navigation and etc.However,there are still some challenges regarding the noisy smartphone GNSS observations,the environment effect and smartphone holding modes and the algorithm development part which restrict the users to achieve high-precision smartphone positioning.In this review paper,we overview the research works carried out in this field with a focus on the following aspects:first,to provide a review of fundamental work on raw smartphone observations and quality assessment of GNSS observations from major smart devices including Google Pixel 4,Google Pixel 5,Xiaomi Mi 8 and Samsung Ultra S20 in terms of their signal strengths and carrier-phase continuities,second,to describe the current state of smartphone positioning research field until most recently in 2021 and,last,to summarize major challenges and opportunities in this filed.Finally,the paper is concluded with some remarks as well as future research perspectives.

A low-cost PDGNSS-based sensor network for landslide monitoring
challenges,possibilities,and prospects

Simple navigation receivers can be used for positioning with sub-centimeter accuracy in a wireless sensor network if the read-out of the carrier phase(CP)data is possible and all data are permanently broadcast to a central processing computer.At this base station an automated near real-time processing takes place and a precise differential GNSS-based positioning of the involved sensor nodes is computed.The paper describes the technical principles of such a system with its essential demands for the sensing,the communication,and the computing components.First experiences in a research project related to landslide monitoring are depicted.Of course the developed system can also be embedded for location finding in a widespread multifunctional geo sensor network.The quality of the obtained result is restricted due to the fact that the CP measurements must be recorded over a certain time span,usually a few minutes for every independent position solution.As far as possible a modular structure with commercial off-theshelf components,e.g.standard wireless local area network for communication,and in cooperation of existing proofed and powerful program tools is chosen.Open interfaces are used as far as possible.

一种基于卡尔曼滤波的RTK定位周跳探测方法

针对载波观测值的周跳问题,提出了一种基于卡尔曼滤波的周跳探测方法。该方法在逐历元递推的时候对模糊度进行实时估计,当载体的位置和速度能够比较准确地估计时,倘若出现周跳,对应模糊度的值会出现相应的变化,通过对前后历元模糊度做差即可获得周跳值及其方差值;之后使用LAMBDA方法对周跳进行固定。实验结果表明,该方法具有良好的周跳探测能力,对于静态数据在99%的情况下能正确确定周跳值,对于动态数据在80%的情况下能正确确定周跳值,且该方法的效果不受频率和周跳卫星数量影响。

Impact of different sampling rates on precise point positioning performance using online processing service

In this study,the effect of different sampling rates(i.e.observation recording interval)on the Precise Point Positioning(PPP)solutions in terms of accuracy was investigated.For this purpose,a field test was carried out inÇorum province,Turkey,on 11 September 2019.Within this context,a Geodetic Point(GP)was established and precisely coordinated.A static GNSS measurement was occupied on the GP for about 4-hour time at 0.10 second(s)/10 Hz measurement intervals with the Trimble R10 geodetic grade GNSS receiver.The original observation file was converted to RINEX format and then decimated into the different data sampling rates as 0.2 s,0.5 s,1 s,5 s,10 s,30 s,60 s,and 120 s.All these RINEX observation files were submitted to the Canadian Spatial Reference System-Precise Point Positioning(CSRS-PPP)online processing service the day after the data collection date by choosing both static and kinematic processing options.In this way,PPP-derived static coordinates,and the kinematic coordinates of each measurement epoch were calculated.The PPP-derived coordinates obtained from each decimated sampling intervals were compared to known coordinates of the GP for northing,easting,2D position,and height components.According to the static and kinematic processing results,high data sampling rates did not change the PPP solutions in terms of accuracy when compared to the results obtained using lower sampling rates.The results of this study imply that it was not necessary to collect GNSS data with high-rate intervals for many surveying projects requiring cm-level accuracy.

Multipath mitigation for GPS/Galileo/BDS-3 precise point positioning with overlap-frequency signals

The multipath effect is a major Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)error source due to its environment-dependent characteristic,which complicates its mitigation process for the high-rate determination of displacements.For instance,Sidereal Filtering(SF)and Multipath Hemispherical Map(MHM)require the observations spanning at least one full cycle of satellite orbit repeat period(e.g.,ten days for Galileo navigation satellite system(Galileo)to reproduce the satellite geometry against ground stations.As a consequence,the practicability of SF and MHM is limited due to potential station-surrounding changes over a long period.In this study,we used the overlap-frequency signals on Global Positioning System(GPS)L1/L5,Galileo E1/E5a,and BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System(BDS-3)B1C/B2a to construct an interoperable MHM(i.e.,MHM_GEC)across constellations to mitigate multipath more efficiently.We thus used 31 days of 1-Hz GPS/Galileo/BDS-3 data at 21 stations in Europe to compare this overlap-frequency MHM with those GNSS-specific MHMs(i.e.,MHM_G for GPS,MHM_E for Galileo,and MHM_C for BDS-3),as well as SF.It is confirmed that the multipath effects on overlap-frequency signals are of a high spatial consistency across all GNSS.The mean reduction rate of applying MHM_GEC to GPS,Galileo,and BDS-3 carrier-phase residuals is 25%,31%,and 28.5%,respectively,which are up to 25 percentage points higher than those of MHM_G,MHM_E,and MHM_C.Furthermore,the MHM_GEC constructed using 5 to 6 days of data can improve the positioning precision by 40%,outperforming the MHM_E,MHM_C,and SF using 10 days of data.Therefore,the interoperable MHM_GEC is more efficient in mitigating multipath effects for high-precision GNSS positioning.