GNSS Receiver-Related Pseudorange Biases: Characteristics and Effects on Wide-Lane Ambiguity Resolution

Abstract

Satellite chip shape distortions lead to signal tracking errors in pseudorange measurements, which are related to the receiver manufacturers, called receiver-related pseudorange biases. Such biases will lead to adverse effects for differential code bias (DCB) and satellite clock estimation, single point positioning (SPP) and precise point positioning (PPP) applications with pseudoranges. In order to assess the characteristics of receiver-related pseudorange biases for global positioning system (GPS), Galileo navigation satellite system (Galileo) and BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS), seven short baselines from the Multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) network are tested. The results demonstrate that there are significant inconsistences of pseudorange biases according to satellites, frequencies, receiver and antenna types. For the baselines using the same receivers of TRIMBLE, pseudorange biases are within ±0.2 ns with the same antennas, while they increase to ±0.6 ns with the different antennas. As for baselines with mixed receiver types, pseudorange biases can reach up to 2.5 ns. Among GPS/Galileo/BDS, Galileo shows the smallest pseudorange biases, and the obvious inconsistences of pseudorange biases are observed between BDS-2 and BDS-3, and Galileo in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites and full operational configuration (FOC) satellites. In order to validate receiver-related pseudorange biases, we carry out relative positioning experiments using short baselines. The results show that the RMS values of position errors are reduced 12.6% and 11.4% in horizontal and vertical components with biases correction. The impacts of receiver-related pseudorange biases on wide-lane (WL) ambiguity are also discussed. The results indicate that the percentage of the fractional parts within ±0.1 cycles have an obvious increase with the pseudorange biases correction, and RMS values of the fractional parts are reduced 28.9% and 67.6% for GPS and BDS, respectively.

Establishment and Validation of Continuously Operating Reference Stations Geosystems Network on Static and Real-Time Kinematic in Benin City, Nigeria

“…With the IGS introduction of the so-called Receiver INdependent EXchange (RINEX) and bespoke software interoperability, data captured by receivers from different manufacturer of GNSS equipment easily go through processing phase when converted to RINEX file format. Equation 1explains better what takes place with using two receivers and how errors are controlled (Cheng et. al., 2021).…”

Variation of receiver code biases under the influence of the receiver type and antenna configuration in the IGS network

“…The inter-day stability of the receiver pseudorange biases is analyzed using the proposed method combined with the IF model. Additionally, no upgrade of the receiver equipment [28], including receiver type, antenna type, and firmware version, occurred in the selected station during the study period, and the temperature fluctuations in the internal receiver hardware and its antenna within a week were ignored [24]. In previous studies, these factors may have caused the interday fluctuation of RCBs.…”

“…Similar to the characteristics of the SCB, the biases are a result of small delays, between events that ideally should be simultaneous, in the reception of the signal in a GNSS receiver. The existence of receiver-specific code bias has a few adverse impacts, including the loss of position accuracy in single point positioning, delay of the PPP convergence performance, obstruction of PPP AR, reduction of the RTK ratio and the RTK fixing rate, and the loss of precision of DCB estimates [22][23][24]. This further increases the need for understanding GNSS receiver hardware biases, as it can facilitate both an increase in the accuracy of the positioning solution and a reduction in the solution convergence time.…”