Search

Abstract The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is presently a powerful tool for sensing the Earth's ionosphere. For this purpose, the ionospheric measurements (IMs), which are by definition slant total electron content biased by satellite and receiver differential code biases (DCBs), need to be first extracted from GNSS data and then used as inputs for further ionospheric representations such as tomography. By using the customary phase-to-code leveling procedure, this research comparatively evaluates the calibration errors on experimental IMs obtained from three GNSS, namely the US Global Positioning System (GPS), the Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), and the European Galileo. On the basis of ten days of dual-frequency, triple-GNSS observations collected from eight co-located ground receivers that independently form short-baselines and zero-baselines, the IMs are determined for each receiver for all tracked satellites and then for each satellite differenced for each baseline to evaluate their calibration errors. As first derived from the short-baseline analysis, the effects of calibration errors on IMs range, in total electron content units, from 1.58 to 2.16, 0.70 to 1.87, and 1.13 to 1.56 for GPS, Galileo, and BDS, respectively. Additionally, for short-baseline experiment, it is shown that the code multipath effect accounts for their main budget. Sidereal periodicity is found in single-differenced (SD) IMs for GPS and BDS geostationary satellites, and the correlation of SD IMs over two consecutive days achieves the maximum value when the time tag is around 4 min. Moreover, as byproducts of zero-baseline analysis, daily between-receiver DCBs for GPS are subject to more significant intra-day variations than those for BDS and Galileo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international GNSS monitoring and assessment system (iGMAS) tracking network has been established by China to track multi-GNSS satellites. A key feature of iGMAS stations is the capability to fully track new navigation signals from the recently deployed BDS-3 satellites. In addition to the B1I and B3I signals inherited from BDS-2 satellites, the BDS-3 satellites are capable of transmitting new open service signals, including B1C at 1575.42 MHz, B2a at 1176.45 MHz, and B2b at 1207.14 MHz. In this contribution, we present a comprehensive analysis and characterization of GNSS signals tracked by different receivers and antennas equipped in the iGMAS network, especially as they relate to BDS-3 signals. Signal characteristics are analyzed in terms of the carrier-to-noise density ratio for the different signals as measured by the receiver, as well as pseudo-range noise and multipath. Special attention is given to discussion of the satellite-induced code bias, which has been identified to exist in the code observations of BDS-2, and the inter-frequency clock bias (IFCB), which has been observed in the triple-frequency carrier phase combinations of GPS Block IIF and BDS-2 satellites. The results indicate that the satellite-induced code bias is negligible for all signals of BDS-3 satellites, while small IFCB variations with peak amplitudes of about 1 cm can be recognized in BDS-3 triple-carrier combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]