Analysis of Multifrequency GNSS Signals and an Improved Single-Epoch RTK Method for Medium-Long Baseline

Abstract

In recent years, the quantity of visible satellites has increased significantly due to multiple satellite systems that leaped forward. The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and Galileo satellite navigation system (Galileo) broadcast triple-frequency signals and above to users, thus enhancing the reliability, continuity, and availability of the single-epoch real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning. In this study, an improved single-epoch multifrequency multisystem RTK method is successfully developed for the medium-long baseline. First, the Galileo and BDS extra-wide-lane (EWL) ambiguities are fixed at a high success rate, and the Galileo and BDS wide-lane (WL) ambiguity is achieved via the transformation process. Second, the fixed WL ambiguities of Galileo and BDS are exploited to elevate the fixed rate of GPS WL ambiguity. Third, the parametric strategies for ionospheric delay are carried out to upregulate the narrow-lane (NL) ambiguity-fixed rate of GPS. Further, the real-time data are adopted for verifying the feasibility of the method developed in this study. The experimental results demonstrate the optimal carrier-to-noise density ratio (C/N0) of full operational capability (FOC) E5a/E5b at all frequencies, followed by IIR-M L1, and IIR-A/B L2 exhibits the worst performance. Generally, the multipath combination (MPC) of Galileo signals shows root mean square (RMS) values within 0.4 m, ordered as follows: $\text{E}1>\text{E}5\text{b}>\text{E}5\text{a}$ . For the BDS-2, the B3 signal exhibits optimal performance, while the B1 signal is the worst. The RMS of MPC errors of L1 signals is smaller than the L2 signals for the GPS. Furthermore, under the 50 km baseline, the GPS NL ambiguity-fixed rate using the ionosphere-free (IF) combination reaches only 47.74% at the ratio threshold of 2. Finally, compared to the ionosphere-free combination method, the GPS NL ambiguity-fixed rate is increased by 45.52% with the presented method. The proposed approach broadens the future application of deformation monitoring in medium-long baseline scenarios.