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Soil moisture monitoring is a research hotspot in the application of navigation satellite reflected signals. In order to retrieve soil moisture in any period with high precision and solve the problem that soil moisture cannot be retrieved when satellite observation data is partially missing, the principle of generalized extension in engineering science is applied to GNSS-IR technology in the paper. Firstly, the generalized extension approximation method is used to interpolate the precise ephemeris to obtain the altitude angle information of each satellite in each epoch. Then, the generalized extended interpolation and extrapolation models were used to supplement the initial phase of the reflected signal corresponding to the missing data as the input of the inversion model to predict soil moisture. The soil moisture inversion experiment was completed according to the observation data provided by PBO. The results show that the generalized extension method can cope with the missing data of different lengths and distributions in GNSS-IR soil moisture retrieval, When the data were confirmed for 15 days, the correlation coefficient of inversion results was 0.916, RSME was 0.03358 cm3/cm3, and MAE was 0.02912 cm3/cm3, and the correlation coefficient of more than 0.85 can be maintained when the amount of missing data reaches 60 % of the test set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) was completed in 2020, the combination of Global Positioning System (GPS), BDS, and Galileo became a popular multi-constellation Precise Point Positioning (PPP) method. With the further standardization of state-space representation (SSR) after March 2021, the suitability of different stochastic models may vary in multi-constellation real-time PPP with SSR corrections. To select an optimal stochastic model, this paper statistically assesses different stochastic models in real-time PPP with SSR corrections at a new mountpoint. In detail, the quality of service (QoS) is analyzed after mountpoints are updated on 22 Mar. 2021. Meanwhile, the four commonly used elevation-dependent stochastic models are compared after expressing the observation model. Specifically, as a modest breakthrough, the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) is introduced to obtain theoretical evidence for possible variations in the suitability of a stochastic model with varying SSR through the mathematical relationship of positioning errors, ephemeris errors, and the stochastic model. Subsequently, the real-time statistical experiments, which are based on 46 reference stations on the Multi-Global Navigation Satellite System Experiment (MGEX) in static and simulated kinematic modes under GPS/Galileo/BDS during continuous 21 days, are statistically analyzed in terms of the positioning accuracy, precision, and convergence. The positioning accuracy and precision of the four commonly used stochastic models are similar, the convergence of the sine stochastic model is optimal in real-time PPP with updated state-space representation (SSR) corrections. The mean convergence time reduces by 51.21% and 25.80%, and the stability of convergence increases by 33.78% and 7.29%, compared with the worst stochastic model in real-time static and simulated kinematic PPP. Finally, the field experiments verified that the sine stochastic model matches best with updated SSR corrections from Centre National d ′ études Spatiales (CNES) for real-time PPP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global Navigation Satellite Systems-Interferometric Reflectometry (GNSS-IR) is an emerging remote sensing technique studied and demonstrated for soil moisture retrieval over bare soil using multipath GNSS data. However, retrieval of soil moisture in the presence of vegetation/crops is still a very challenging task even becoming a more complex problem without using any ancillary datasets to compensate the vegetation effect for soil moisture retrievals in higher crop growth stages. This paper presents a novel multipath phase-based vegetation correction scheme for improved field-scale soil moisture retrieval using L-band data from Navigation with Indian Constellations (NavIC) based on GNSS-IR technique. The proposed three steps vegetation correction scheme categorized the crop as per growth stages for sensitivity analysis of NavIC derived multipath phase as GNSS-IR observables and significantly compensated vegetation effects on multipath phase for improved soil moisture retrievals. The proposed method utilized only multipath phase data as single SNR metrics without any ancillary data sets and validated during complete growth cycle of winter wheat crop (sowing to harvesting stages). It has been shown that the soil moisture retrieved using proposed vegetation correction scheme provides a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.87 and ubRMSD of 0.0341 m3/m3 with in situ measured soil moisture, which is better than bare scheme with Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.71 and ubRMSD of 0.0480 m3/m3. Overall, proposed scheme has found highly effective for vegetation correction and has shown a good potential candidate for VSM retrievals over crop-covered soil using other GNSS constellations (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Are osynchronous and low Mars orbit satellites evaluated on their EOL opportunities. • Transferring them to graveyard orbits is the only realistic end-of-life measure. • Graveyard orbits prevent interactions with original orbits for at least 200 years. • Derelict spacecraft in areosynchronous orbits must be lowered in altitude by 400 km. • Graveyard orbits for low Mars orbit satellites are 100 km below the original orbits. • For graveyard orbit objects, free tumbling and uncertainties in state are assessed. • Graveyard orbit behaviour depends ongeometry characteristics of spacecraft-Mars-Sun. Mars is expected to become a focal point of exploration (human and robotic) in the coming century, with a very likely need for a robust space infrastructure. Be it communication and navigation satellite constellations or scientific missions in low Mars orbits (LMO) and Areosynchronous orbits (ASO), every individual satellite will have a definitive period of operation after which it becomes derelict. At the end-of-life (EOL) the satellite shall be proactively dealt with in a sustainable manner to protect our access to the space environment of Mars and opportunities to use this. Clearly, impacting Mars or escaping Mars' gravity are no viable options. This paper aims at identifying graveyard orbit solutions in circummartian space for future Mars space debris. Orbital stability for a period of 200 years is studied for Martian orbits using the symplectic integration technique. Extensive validations are performed and propagation and integration settings are tuned to suit a variety of configurations. A plethora of candidate graveyard orbit solutions are found and presented for orbits in the ASO and LMO regimes. For example, it is found that transferring an ASO satellite to 400 km below the nominal orbit altitude would ensure a stability margin of ± 25 km for at least 200 years. Multiple orbital geometry characteristics (combinations of semi-major axis, inclination, right ascension of ascending node), satellite geometries (various values of area-to-mass ratio) and uncertainties are studied to produce a comprehensive analysis of long-term stability of potential graveyard orbits around Mars, making them attractive for such purposes. The protected zones are found to be safe from debris even for an uncertainty in initial eccentricity of 0.01 and variations in cross-sectional area due to uncontrolled tumbling. The overall objective of this paper is to make designers of future missions to Mars aware of the EOL aspects and include this in their mission design proposals at an early stage already. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions related to ionospheric anomalies ought to be carefully governed because of their dynamics. The anomalies in the ionosphere that happen before-after an earthquake play a crucial rule in estimations of earthquakes. The anomalies can be detected and discussed with the help of total electron content (TEC). This essay examines anomalies before and after the M w 7.1 northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge (52.649° N-31.902° W) earthquake that occurred on February 13, 2015. This examination is performed with the help of the TEC (TECU) map. The paper employs the Global Navigation Satellite System-based TEC map. The TEC map obtained from the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) is interpolated with the northern Mid-Atlantic at locations 52.250° N-52.500° N and 30.000° W-35.000° W. In the paper, the TEC map frequency-domain amplitudes are resolved by short-term Fourier transformation spectral analysis. To distinguish the anomaly reason from each other, the effect of solar activity with the F10.7 (sfu) index and the effect of geomagnetic storm with B z (nT), v (km/s), P (nPa), E (mV/m), Kp (nT), and Dst (nT) parameters (index) is analyzed. The lower boundary and the upper boundary of interpolated CODE TEC map are specified with the help of median and standard deviation. The TEC data that does not locate within the specified limits are marked as an anomaly. According to the work, 9-day TEC anomalies (5-day of them belong to pre-earthquake) are detected. The anomalies observed on February 2, 3, 5, and 7 may relate to the Mid-Atlantic earthquake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an adaptive Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based Unscented Kalman Filter for the pose estimation of uncooperative spacecraft. The validation is carried out at Stanford's robotic Testbed for Rendezvous and Optical Navigation on the Satellite Hardware-In-the-loop Rendezvous Trajectories (SHIRT) dataset, which simulates vision-based rendezvous trajectories of a servicer spacecraft to PRISMA's Tango spacecraft. The proposed navigation system is stress-tested on synthetic as well as realistic lab imagery by simulating space-like illumination conditions on-ground. The validation is performed at different levels of the navigation system by first training and testing the adopted CNN on SPEED+, Stanford's spacecraft pose estimation dataset with specific emphasis on domain shift between a synthetic domain and an Hardware-In-the-Loop domain. A novel data augmentation scheme based on light randomization is proposed to improve the CNN robustness under adverse viewing conditions, reaching centimeter-level and 10 degree-level pose errors in 80% of the SPEED+ lab images. Next, the entire navigation system is tested on the SHIRT dataset. Results indicate that the inclusion of a new scheme to adaptively scale the heatmaps-based measurement error covariance based on filter innovations improves filter robustness by returning centimeter-level position errors and moderate attitude accuracies, suggesting that a proper representation of the measurements uncertainty combined with an adaptive measurement error covariance is key in improving the navigation robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed X-ray pulsar-based navigation (DXNAV) is an effective method to realize earth-orbit satellite positioning under weak pulsar signal conditions. In this paper, we propose a new DXNAV method based on multiple information fusion. The DXNAV system principle and the pulse phase estimate Cramér-Rao lower bound are deduced. To suppress the calculation complexity and the error source, the X-ray pulsar photon time-of-arrival detected by each satellite is equivalently converted to the leading satellite directly using the inter-satellite link ranging and starlight angular distance measurement. A high precision estimate model of the pulse phase is built using pulsar standard profile, observed profile, and star-geocentric angular distance from distributed satellites. The estimated pulse phase is real-time supplied to the navigation system, which is established in the form of a deviation equation. The two-stage Kalman filter is designed to estimate the pulse phase in profile histogram bin step and the leader position in real-time step. Compared separately with the maximum likelihood phase estimate method and the celestial navigation method using only the star-geocentric angular distance, the simulation analysis shows that the estimation precisions of position and velocity are improved by 29% and 25%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To make up for the insufficiency of earth-based TT&C systems, the use of GNSS technology for high-orbit spacecraft navigation and orbit determination has become a new technology. It is of great value to applying Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) and Inclined GeoStationary Orbit (IGSO) navigation satellites for supporting the navigation of high-orbit spacecraft since there are three different types of navigation satellites in BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS): Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), GEO and IGSO. This paper conducts simulation experiments based on Two-Line Orbital Element (TLE) data to analyze and demonstrate the role of these satellites in the navigation of high-orbit spacecraft. Firstly, the spacecraft in GEO was used as the target satellite to conduct navigation experiments. Experiments show that for the spacecraft on the GEO orbit, after adding GEO and IGSO respectively on the basis of receiving MEO navigation satellite signals, the accuracies were improved by 7.22 % and 6.06 % respectively. When adding both GEO and IGSO navigation satellites at the same time, the accuracy can reach 16 m. In the second place, navigation and positioning experiments were carried out on three high elliptical orbit (HEO) satellites with different semimajor axis (32037.2 km, 42385.9 km, 67509.6 km). The experiments show that the number of visible satellites has been improved significantly after adding GEO and IGSO navigation satellites at the same time. The visible satellites in these three orbits were improved by 32.84 %, 41.12 % and 37.68 %, respectively compared with only observing MEO satellites.The RMS values of the navigation positioning errors of these three orbits are 25.59 m, 87.58 m and 712.48 m, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ionospheric effect on radio wave propagation error has a significant impact on navigation, positioning, and real-time measurements. It is the primary source of errors in high precision aviation and measurement systems. A set of eight coefficients is used to correct ionospheric errors for Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) users. Currently, the Klobuchar model is an effective low computational mathematical model for ionospheric range error mitigation through a set of eight coefficients. It has low accuracy in Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) regions and can correct up to ∼60% of the ionospheric range error. This paper proposes an ionospheric error correction model that can be applied to such measurements as well as an associated error model to compute accuracy with a differential interval of observations 5 m, 30 m and 60 m. The numerical simulation results show that compared to widely used algorithms, the proposed strategy can enhance the 83.13% ionospheric correction with Klobuchar- like coefficients at a sampling rate of 5 m. The proposed solution could be effective for Regional Navigational Satellite Systems (RNSS) for ionospheric delay corrections in low-latitude regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short Message Communication (SMC) is a featured service of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS). After its successful deployment in 2003, Regional Short Message Communication (RSMC) service has been continuously serving China and its neighboring countries and regions, especially in life safety scenarios. In this paper, the architecture of the Global Short Message Communication (GSMC) system is proposed based on the medium earth orbit (MEO) constellation and the crosslinks of the global BeiDou navigation system (BDS-3). Three subtypes of GSMC service, i.e. positioning report, emergency search and rescue (SAR) and regular SMC are designed in accordance with the technical characteristic of integration of navigation and communication in BDS-3, which supports future wide applications of GSMC. The performance of the designed GSMC system is analyzed by numerical calculations. As BDS-3 was officially announced completion on July 31, 2020, GSMC has been providing initial service. First test results of the in orbit GSMC payloads are also presented in the paper to verify the designed capabilities. Preliminary results also show that the requirements of Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) can also be fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On December 27, 2018, the Beidou-3 System (BDS-3) has completed the deployment of 18 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites combined as a space constellation. In addition to the augmentation information for the new system signals B1C and B2a, the BDS-3 is compatible with the three augmentation information broadcast by the BDS-2 system for B1I and B3I signals: equivalent clock error correction, User Differential Ranging Error (UDRE) and Grid Ionosphere Vertical Error (GIVE). In this paper, the observation data of Beidou monitoring network are used to analyze the pseudo-range observation quality of the smooth transition signals B1I and B3I of BDS-2 and BDS-3. At the same time, the relationship between the equivalent clock error correction and the prediction error of the satellite clock is analyzed by using the Two-Way Satellite Time and Frequency Transfer (TWSTFT) data. The results show that the correlation between the equivalent clock error correction and the monitored clock error by using the TWSTFT data is greater than 60%. We calculate the UDRE by using the equivalent clock error correction. The results show that the satellite equivalent clock error correction can improve the accuracy of User Equivalent Range Error (UERE) by about 50%. This paper also compares the positioning accuracy of the BDS-2 satellites with the BDS-2 satellites combined BDS-3 satellites. The results show that the three-dimensional positioning accuracy is improved by about 30% after the BDS-3 satellites are added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precise navigation for satellites of any kind is the key to future cost-effective Lunar missions. The usability of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for such high-altitude applications is still challenging due to reduced signal power levels, satellites visibility or signal processing complexity with all that resulting in a low position, velocity and time (PVT) accuracy, which is typically expressed by geometric dilution of precision (GDOP) parameters. This paper proposes a navigation method based on re-transmission combined with multi-GNSS concept, specifically signal reception from GPS, Galileo, Glonass, BeiDou and SBAS satellites' antenna pattern main-lobes and side-lobes. Those signals are re-transmitted from the user satellite at the Lunar distance to the Earth, where all the signal processing is assumed to be performed. Based on the results from the tests of the of modelled scenario, the method presents an improvement of the position dilution of precision (PDOP, a subset of GDOP) parameters for the missions at the Lunar distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption of spherical uniformity while the retrieval of electron density profiles from the Global Navigation Satellite Systems-Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) observations is often violated and introduces significant errors in the retrieved electron density profile data. This paper presents an improved Abel-inversion technique by incorporating the horizontal gradients in the ionosphere, which are routinely derived from the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based background NmF2 (peak electron density of F2-layer) model (ANNC2) assimilated with near real-time Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate-2 (FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2) NmF2 data. The ANNC2-aided Abel inversion is then implemented for more accurate retrieval of electron density profiles from COSMIC-2 in real-time. It is found that the ANNC2-aided inversion has improved the electron density values around the F2-region and below, which yields a clear separation between two anomaly crests. Further, the ANNC2-aided Abel inversion had significantly reduced the artificial plasma caves beneath the equatorial ionization anomaly crests. Furthermore, COSMIC-2 NmF2 observations obtained from both classical and the ANNC2-aided Abel inversion are compared with the ground-based Digisonde data and found that the ANNC2-aided inversion gives the better results. This study provides some new insights on the aided Abel inversion technique assisted by ANN models for the real-time correction of Abel retrieved electron density profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Formations of small satellites are becoming more and more important to many space applications, since they offer the possibility of distributing the payload functionality among the different elements of the formation, so to improve scientific return, providing at the same time a number of advantages in terms of overall system reliability, flexibility and modularity. However, precise autonomous determination of the relative positions of the formation members is required for formation acquisition and maintenance, and scientific objective achievement. For Low-Earth-Orbit formations, this task can be performed exploiting GPS-based relative positioning techniques. The technique exploited in this paper is designed for on board usage. It processes double differenced pseudo-range and carrier phase observables on two frequencies within a hybrid filtering scheme to get satisfactory precision and high robustness. However, relative positioning by GPS is affected by the capability of correctly estimating differential ionospheric delays, and, then, by the status of ionosphere activity. Hence, the filter includes an ionospheric model capable of reproducing ionosphere horizontal gradients with a minimum number of parameters, which can be estimated on the fly. In addition, a robust tuning approach is developed in the paper to get stable filter performance over long period of times. Specifically, the proposed approach combines an empirical tuning technique with a randomized algorithm to get the best filter tuning. Filter performance and tuning approach effectiveness are successfully verified using freely available GPS flight data of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-interference and high-precision measurement are two important indicators of the performance of a satellite navigation receiver. However, current receiver designs do not simultaneously satisfy these two criteria. While the carrier-phase ranging technique is necessary for high-precision receivers, frequency domain interference suppression (FDIS) results in tracking error biases for nonideal analog receiver channels. Importantly, as the FDIS filter is adaptive, the bias will vary with the jamming pattern, particularly when the frequency of interference varies. For precision navigation applications, this bias must be mitigated. Therefore, a new FDIS filter based on the mirror frequency amplitude compensation (MFAC) method is proposed in this paper. The amplitude at the symmetry position of the notch frequency is doubled in the MFAC method to mitigate this carrier-phase bias. The simulation results showed that the MFAC method can reduce the range of the carrier-phase bias by more than 60% for different interference bandwidths, which substantially exceeds that achieved using the conventional FDIS and calibration filter methods of 20 orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satellite autonomous navigation is an important function of the BeiDou-3 navigation System (BDS-3). Satellite autonomous navigation means that the navigation satellite uses long-term forecast ephemeris and Inter-Satellite Link (ISL) measurements to determinate its own spatial position and time reference without the support of the ground Operation and Control System (OCS) for a long time to ensure that the navigation system can normally maintain the time and space reference. This paper aims to analyze the feasibility of distributed autonomous navigation algorithms. For the first time, a ground parallel autonomous navigation test system (GPANTS) is built. The performance of distributed autonomous navigation is then analyzed using the two-way ISL ranging of BDS-3 satellites. First, the BDS simulation platform and the GPANTS are introduced. Then, the basic principles of distributed satellite autonomous orbit determination and time synchronization based on ISL measurements are summarized. Preliminary evaluation of the performance of the BDS-3 constellation autonomous navigation service under ideal conditions through simulation data. Then the performance of autonomous navigation for 22 BeiDou-3 satellites using ISL measurements is evaluated. The results show that when satellites operate autonomously for 50 days without the support of any ground station, the User Range Error (URE) of autonomous orbit determination is better than 3 m, and the time synchronization accuracy is better than 4 ns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the increasing demands from the real-time Precise Point Positioning (PPP) users, the real-time satellite orbit and clock products are generated by different International GNSS Service (IGS) real-time analysis centers and can be publicly received through the Internet. Based on different data sources and processing strategies, the real-time products from different analysis centers therefore differ in availability and accuracy. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate availability and accuracy of different real-time products and their effects on real-time PPP. A total of nine commonly used Real-Time Service (RTS) products, namely IGS01, IGS03, CLK01, CLK15, CLK22, CLK52, CLK70, CLK81 and CLK90, will be evaluated in this paper. Because not all RTS products support multi-GNSS, only GPS products are analyzed in this paper. Firstly, the availability of all RTS products is analyzed in two levels. The first level is the epoch availability, indicating whether there is outage for that epoch. The second level is the satellite availability, which defines the available satellite number for each epoch. Then the accuracy of different RTS products is investigated on nominal accuracy and the accuracy degradation over time. Results show that Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE) of satellite orbit ranges from 3.8 cm to 7.5 cm for different RTS products. While the mean Standard Deviations of Errors (STDE) of satellite clocks range from 1.9 cm to 5.6 cm. The modified Signal In Space Range Error (SISRE) for all products are from 1.3 cm to 5.5 cm for different RTS products. The accuracy degradation of the orbit has the linear trend for all RTS products and the satellite clock degradation depends on the satellite clock types. The Rb clocks on board of GPS IIF satellites have the smallest degradation rate of less than 3 cm over 10 min while the Cs clocks on board of GPS IIF have the largest degradation rate of more than 10 cm over 10 min. Finally, the real-time kinematic PPP is carried out to investigate the effects of different real-time products. The CLK90 has the best performance and mean RMSE of 26 globally distributed IGS stations in three components are 3.2 cm, 6.6 cm and 8.5 cm. And the second-best positioning results are using IGS03 products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) applications with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), the geometric dilution of precision (GDOP) offers an important index for selecting satellites from all tracked satellites for positioning calculation. In general, the lower the GDOP values are, the more accurate the PNT solution is. Therefore, the GDOP minimum should be pursued. In this paper, we mainly focused on the GDOP minimum when the single-point positioning is based on the integration of three GNSSs. The GDOP minimum for any number of tracked satellites is theoretically derived in this paper. In addition, when the number of the satellites is equal to that of the unknown parameters, the correctness of GDOP minimum obtained has also been validated from two different perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the increasing numbers of navigation satellites, available frequencies, and tracking stations, the computational efficiency of large GNSS networks has become a critical issue, especially when undifferenced (UD) pseudorange and carrier phase observations are used. By converting UD carrier phases into carrier ranges before implementing the integrated processing of a whole network, the UD calculation time can be greatly decreased. However, because a common multicore hardware platform is not fully utilized to optimize the algorithm, the processing of a whole network is still time consuming. In this paper, this problem is overcome by applying the multicore parallel computing technology, namely the Task Parallel Library (TPL). To improve the processing efficiency of large GNSS networks using UD carrier ranges and based on the task parallelism and data parallelism offered through TPL, the wide-lane (WL) and narrow-lane (NL) fractional cycle biases (FCBs), and carrier ranges are computed in parallel, and the integrated processing of a whole network is performed by establishing the normal equation in parallel and adopting parallel computing for Cholesky decomposition. The proposed strategy is validated using GPS, BDS and Galileo observation data recorded from January 6, 2019, to January 26, 2019 by the IGS network with a global distribution of approximately 500 stations. The average positioning accuracies in the east, north and vertical components are 2.54, 2.34 and 4.41 mm, respectively, and the average SDBS ambiguity fixing rate is 93.18%. The average time consumptions for step 1, 2 and 3 are reduced from 151.45, 248.80 and 44.35 min to 32.20, 52.71 and 14.25 min, respectively, with acceleration ratios of 4.70, 4.72 and 3.11 times, respectively, on a six-core platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The radio determination satellite service (RDSS) is an advantageous and unique aspect of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) because other satellite navigation systems do not incorporate the RDSS. Due to the ageing of RDSS equipment, there is a long-term drift in various types of RDSS equipment time delays. There are some differences in the RDSS positioning accuracy with the change in the out-station beams, which seriously affects the positioning accuracy and service capability of the RDSS system. At present, the time delay calibration method involves sending the device to the equipment verification field to remeasure the time delay, which is cumbersome and time-consuming. The service performance and availability of the RDSS system have become greatly degraded. Therefore, a simple and efficient RDSS time delay calibration method has become an important topic for the global BeiDou system. In this study, the time delays of all channels, in-station beams, and out-station beams were obtained by the O-C method (O is the measured value and C is the theoretical value). The experiments were performed using BeiDou RDSS data in continuous 8-day tests involving five RDSS users. The results showed that the time delay accuracies of the RDSS channels, in-station beams, and out-station beams were 2.37 ns, 1.63 ns, and 2.39 ns, respectively. The positioning tests were performed based on the original and adjusted delays. The mean horizontal positioning accuracy of the five RDSS users improved from 19.71 to 4.14 m, with an average increase of 77%. The positioning accuracy achieved in this paper is much better than that of 20 m in the Beijing calibration area at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), multi-GNSS is expected to greatly benefit precise point positioning (PPP), especially during the outage of real time service (RTS). In this paper, we focus on the performance of multi-GNSS satellite clock prediction and its application in real-time PPP. Based on the statistical analysis of multi-system satellite clock products, a model consisting of polynomial and periodic terms is employed for multi-system satellite clock prediction. To evaluate the method proposed, both post-processed and real-time satellite clock products are employed in simulated real-time processing mode. The results show that the accuracy of satellite clock prediction is related to atomic clock type and satellite type. For GPS satellites, the average standard deviations (STDs) of Cs atomic clocks will reach as high as 0.65 ns while the STD of Rb atomic clocks is only about 0.15 ns. As for BDS and Galileo, the average STD of 2-hour satellite clock prediction are 0.30 ns and 0.06 ns, respectively. In addition, it is validated that real-time PPP can still achieve positioning accuracy of one to three decimeters by using products of 2-hour satellite clock prediction. Moreover, compared to the results of GPS-only PPP, multi-system can greatly enhance the accuracy of real-time PPP from 12.5% to 18.5% in different situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive beamforming is an effective spatial filtering technique for overcoming the vulnerability to interference of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers. Although beamforming-based satellite system has the capability of nulling electronic interference sources, the distortions to GNSS receiver induced by impulsive noises are always neglected. This paper addresses the satellite navigation signal acquisition problem in the presence of impulsive noises with alpha-stable noise using the maximum correntropy criterion in framework of the GNSS system. In addition, in order to decrease the number of active elements for avoiding overmuch energy consumption, a sparse regularization is introduced to the constraints of the novel criterion. From the analysis, the novel constraint sparse maximum correntropy (CSMC) beamforming technique that can achieve robustness against impulsive noises which uses less power is developed in this manuscript for satellite signal acquisition. The proposed CSMC, maintains the robustness against impulsive outliers and achieve better performance in conjunction with less power consumption. A mean square analysis of the CSMC algorithm is presented to verify the validity of our theory. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods over other previously developed beamforming techniques in GNSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new generation of satellites aimed for the BeiDou-3 global positioning system (BDS-3) has recently been launched. These satellites will play a crucial role in its globalization process. The performance of the BDS-3 experimental satellites has been addressed in previous works. However, performance analysis of the orbits of BDS-3 satellites is still lacking. Using the observation data of the B1I and B3I frequency signals across different stations, this paper provides quality analysis, precise orbit determination (POD), and orbit comparison. The results presented here show that the ranging accuracy of BDS-3 is superior to that of the BeiDou-2 system (BDS-2). The satellite-induced code bias of BDS-2 satellite is not obvious on BDS-3 satellite. The orbit accuracy of BDS-3 satellite is superior to the BDS-2 satellite. The average three-dimensional root-mean-square error (RMS) of two-day overlapping arcs for BDS-3 satellite orbits is within 0.1 m, and the satellite laser ranging (SLR) validation reports that the orbit radial-track is within 6 cm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting in March 2015, 5 new-generation BDS satellites, including 2 satellites in IGSO and 3 satellites in MEO, have been launched with the Inter Satellite Links (ISLs) on-board and the measurements have been tested. With the ISLs, BDS can achieve Autonomous Navigation (AutoNav) without support of ground facilities. In AutoNav, for lack of the external datum, the residual constellation rotation cannot be observed. This problem will be solved with the support of ground facilities. When ground facilities are available, Combined Orbit Determination (COD) can be achieved by using measurements from the ISLs and ground facilities, which can dramatically improve the precision of orbit determination. Normally, there are two kinds of filters adopted in AutoNav, namely the Parameter Integration Filter (PIF) and the Parameter Decomposition Filter (PDF). The PIF, which is also commonly used in COD due to the one-way property of the L-band satellite-ground measurements, had been prove less efficient than the PDF in AutoNav. As an attempt of improving the solving efficiency for COD, a new PDF is presented and implemented in COD of BDS in this paper. Based on the implement of the COD with simulated observations, the performance of PDF in COD is evaluated by comparing to the PIF in regards to precision and solving efficiency. The results indicate that, given enough observations, the PDF is superior to the PIF in terms of CERR and URE, while inferior to PIF in terms of RERR and PERR. Moreover, the solving efficiency of the PDF is much higher than that of the PIF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Indian region is expected to receive signal from multiple satellite-based navigation systems for multi-GNSS hybrid operation. Even in presence of GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO signals together, it is regularly found that, during some parts of the day no GNSS satellite is available above 60° elevation angle from large parts of India. This may cause problem in seamless navigation solutions in the locations, where visibility of the satellites is also obstructed in the lower elevation angles, which is a common feature in Indian urban conditions; the situation also degrades satellite geometry. IRNSS/NavIC is Indian indigenous regional navigation system operational since 2016. This paper presents theoretical, simulated and initial results of real-time studies on IRNSS/NavIC visibility from India using a IRNSS-GPS-SBAS (IGS) receiver. The studies show that, in such situations of inferior GNSS satellite visibility, IRNSS/NavIC operating together with GPS, can augment this time-dependent degraded visibility conditions. The Indian satellite navigation system ensures presence of at least one satellite above 60° elevation for use with GPS over the Indian region, supports multi-GNSS operation towards seamless solution, and improves satellite geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite is a crucial part of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) constellation. However, due to various perturbation forces acting on the GEO satellite, it drifts gradually over time. Thus, frequent orbit maneuvers are required to maintain the satellite at its designed position. During the orbit maneuver and recovery periods, the orbit quality of the maneuvered satellite computed with broadcast navigation ephemeris will be significantly degraded. Furthermore, the conventional dynamic Precise Orbit Determination (POD) approach may not work well, because of a lack of publicly available satellite information for modeling the thrust forces. In this paper, a near real-time approach free of thrust forces modeling is proposed for BDS GEO satellite orbit determination and maneuver analysis based on the Reversed Point Positioning (RPP). First, the station coordinates and receiver clock offsets are estimated by GPS/BDS combined Single Point Positioning (SPP) with single-frequency phase-smoothed pseudorange observations. Then, with the fixed station coordinates and receiver clock offsets, the RPP method can be conducted to determine the GEO satellite orbits. When no orbit maneuvers occur, the proposed method can obtain orbit accuracies of 0.92, 2.74, and 8.30 m in the radial, along-track, and cross-track directions, respectively. The average orbit-only Signal-In-Space Range Error (SISRE) is 1.23 m, which is slightly poorer than that of the broadcast navigation ephemeris. Using four days of GEO maneuvered datasets, it is further demonstrated that the derived orbits can be employed to characterize the behaviors of GEO satellite maneuvers, such as the time span of the maneuver as well as the satellite thrusting accelerations. These results prove the efficiency of the proposed method for near real-time GEO satellite orbit determination during maneuvers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tropospheric delay is a systematic error source in the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning. However, without accuracy meteorological information, the quality of the Zenith Tropospheric Delay (ZTD) derived from empirical tropospheric models like Saastamoinen model will degrade, leading to inaccurate estimates of positions. To solve the above problem, on the basis of Global Pressure and Temperature 2/2w (GPT2/GPT2w) model, this paper conducted GPT2/GPT2w+Saastamoinen models for estimating ZTD over Asian area. As GPT2w model has two resolutions of 1 and 5 degrees, the effects of two models (GPT2_5w+S refers to GPT2w+Saastamoinen model with the resolution of 5 degree; GPT2_1w+S refers to GPT2w+Saastamoinen model with the resolution of 1 degree) were analyzed respectively. The model’s validation was carried out using the International GNSS Service (IGS) ZTD values derived from the observed data in the year 2012 at 27 IGS stations. The results show that the GPT2_1w+S model can provide tropospheric delay corrections with bias of 0.66 cm and Root Mean Square (RMS) of 4.93 cm, which is superior to GPT2+S model. The annual bias and RMS for the GPT2_5w+S model are slightly worse than that for the GPT2_1w+S model. For most stations, the bias and RMS show seasonal characteristics. The relation between the annual bias and RMS with latitude for the models is not obvious, and a latitude dependency between the models could not be detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although purely using the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) users cannot obtain the theoretical GDOP minimum unless the GNSS positioning is aided by a certain number of pseudolites, discussing this problem is still meaningful in understanding the issues about the positioning geometry, such as the PDOP minimization. Many literatures have pointed that the GDOP (Geometric Dilution of Precision) minimum in 3-D positioning is the root square of 10/ n where n is the total number of GNSS satellites or ground-based beacons with known coordinates. As the case with five known points concerned in this paper, the current knowledge indicates that the GDOP can reach the minimum the root square of 2, but our discussion shows that the GDOP minimum with five known points cannot get the theoretical minimum the root square of 2, although there are infinite positioning configurations with the lowest PDOP. Fortunately, we can find a positioning configuration with the GDOP 1.428 which is very close to the theoretical minimum 1.414. The PDOP can always reach the theoretical minimum the root square of 9/ n , and there are infinite solutions for n > 4. However for GDOP minimization, only when n > 5, infinite solutions can be obtained. The configurations with the lowest GDOPs can be given by solving a set of nonlinear algebraic equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the potential of using BDS and GPS signals to position in challenged environments such as indoors. Traditional assisted GNSS approaches that use code phase as measurements (i.e., coarse-time solutions) are shown to be prone to multipath and noise. An enhanced approach that has superior sensitivity and positioning performance—the so-called direct positioning receiver architecture—has been implemented and evaluated using live indoor BDS and/or GPS signals. Real indoor experiments have been conducted in Shanghai and significant improvement has been observed with enhanced approaches: results with BDS constellation show better horizontal positioning performance (biases are less than 10 m) than using GPS alone, but are slightly worse in the vertical axis; when using the enhanced approach with BDS and GPS, both horizontal and vertical axes show promising results for the environments considered herein; the coarse-time state converges faster and is more reliable compared to other solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this article we model a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in a Schwarzschild space–time, as a first approximation of the relativistic geometry around the Earth. The closed time-like and scattering light-like geodesics are obtained analytically, describing respectively trajectories of satellites and electromagnetic signals. We implement an algorithm to calculate Schwarzschild coordinates of a GNSS user who receives proper times sent by four satellites, knowing their orbital parameters; the inverse procedure is implemented to check for consistency. The constellation of satellites therefore realizes a geocentric inertial reference system with no a priori realization of a terrestrial reference frame. We perform a simulation of position determination and show that the determination of the four coordinates with a 25–32 digit accuracy takes only around 60ms. Effects of non-gravitational perturbations on positioning errors are assessed, and methods to reduce them are sketched. In particular, inter-links between satellites could greatly enhance stability and accuracy of the positioning system. Effects of gravitational perturbations are omitted in this paper in order to make a clearer comparison between the relativistic and non-relativistic scheme, but they will be included in subsequent work. We believe that the final algorithm will be a serious alternative to the usual post-Newtonian scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: GPS scintillation and TEC measurements have been carried out at Wuhan (114.36°E, 30.53°N, magnetic latitude 19.4°) since 2003. In this paper effects of a major storm on GPS amplitude scintillations and phase fluctuations are investigated. Remarkably enhanced activity and intensity of amplitude scintillations during the latter main phase of the storm, in the night of November 10, 2004, were observed in the region of the ionospheric equatorial anomaly in the southern China. TEC depletions and its rapid fluctuations occurred at the same time when enhanced scintillations occurred. The statistic analysis shows there is a remarkable positive correlation between the ROTI index and the S4 index. The irregularity apparent drift velocity at the storm time is estimated using data of the rate of TEC changes collected at three spaced stations. It is obtained that the irregularity drifts westward along the zonal direction with the velocity changing from about 130m/s to 40m/s in the night of November 10, 2004. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]