Ionospheric effects on relative positioning within a dense GPS network

Abstract

Local variability in total electron content can seriously affect the accuracy of GNSS real-time applications. We have developed software to compute the positioning error due to the ionosphere for all baselines of the Belgian GPS network, called the Active Geodetic Network (AGN). In a first step, a reference day has been chosen to validate the methodology by comparing results with the nominal accuracy of relative positioning at centimeter level. Then, the effects of two types of ionospheric disturbances on the positioning error have been analyzed: (1) Traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) and (2) noiselike variability due to geomagnetic storms. The influence of baseline length on positioning error has been analyzed for these three cases. The analysis shows that geomagnetic storms induce the largest positioning error (more than 2 m for a 20 km baseline) and that the positioning error depends on the baseline orientation. Baselines oriented parallel to the propagation direction of the ionospheric disturbances are more affected than others. The positioning error due to ionospheric small-scale structures can be so identified by our method, which is not always the case with the modern ionosphere mitigation techniques. In the future, this ionospheric impact formulation could be considered in the development of an integrity monitoring service for GNSS relative positioning users.

Study on reliable GNSS positioning with intense TEC fluctuations at high latitudes

“…The above functional model was implemented in the inhouse developed GNSS processing software (Paziewski 2012(Paziewski , 2015. In this implementation, the model parameters are estimated with the least squares adjustment with a priori parameter constraints (Leick 2004;Xu 2007). The ionosphere and troposphere parameter weights correspond to the accuracy of the tropospheric and ionospheric a priori values.…”

First results of registering ionospheric disturbances obtained with SibNet network of GNSS receivers in active space experiments

“…Results of all these studies, on the one hand, help to understand more thoroughly the physics of observed phenomena and, on the other hand, enable us to improve GNSS performance: to increase the accuracy of determination of coordinates, to reduce the probability of slips, etc. [Prikryl et al, 2010;Demyanov, Yasyukevich, 2011;Demyanov et al, 2012;Lejeune et al, 2012;Jiao et al, 2013]. For earthquake-prone regions (in particular, for the Baikal rift system), an important applied problem is also to search for responses and possible precursors of earthquakes [Seismoionospheric ..., 2012].…”

“…It was oriented so that its jet stream was directed toward ground-based instruments. The purpose of the experiment was to detect and simultaneously record jet-induced effects with various geophysical instruments [Lebedev et al, 2014;Lipko et al, 2016;Klunko et al, 2016;Beletsky et al, 2016;Shpynev et al, 2017]. Along with other instruments, a new regional network of GNSS stations (SibNet), developed in ISTP SB RAS, was used to record effects of operation of CS engines.…”

A new approach to outlying data in estimation of vertical total electron content

“…The estimation of the ionospheric effect is significant for all kinds of earth observation applications and space weather studies. There are many currently available ionosphere models in order to define the TEC under various space weather conditions [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. The dispersive and heterogeneous nature of the ionosphere provides the opportunity to determine the TEC distribution by using dual frequency GPS observables.…”

“…The dispersive and heterogeneous nature of the ionosphere provides the opportunity to determine the TEC distribution by using dual frequency GPS observables. While some studies were focused on only single GPS station observables [20], the ionosphere models have fitted to global and regional GPS networks in recent years due to the global and regional reasons [17,18,19].…”