Tightly combined triple-frequency GPS and BDS for rapid wide-lane RTK positioning with consideration of carrier-phase differential inter-system bias.

Multi-frequency signals have been accessible for most Global Navigation Satellite Systems. Existing studies have verified that using multi-frequency extra-wide-lane and wide-lane observations can realize decimeter, sub-decimeter and even centimeter rapid positioning. In this paper, a tightly combined wide-lane real-time kinematic positioning method using triple-frequency GPS and BDS is proposed. The differential inter-system bias is taken into consideration so that an inter-system differencing model is formed. Due to the influence of different frequencies between GPS and BDS, the double-difference wide-lane ambiguity between GPS and BDS reference satellites and the single-difference ambiguity of the BDS reference satellite are estimated jointly with the wide-lane differential inter-system bias. Thus, a full-rank model can be obtained without any external calibration. Using the stability of wide-lane differential inter-system bias in the estimation from epoch to epoch, redundant observations can be introduced, therefore the strength of the positioning model can be enhanced. Positioning performance under simulated obstructed environments is evaluated. The results show that the inter-system model can effectively improve the positioning compared with the conventional intra-system model for the severely obstructed situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]