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A New Approach for Optimising GNSS Positioning Performance in Harsh Observation Environments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2014

Shuguo Pan*
Affiliation:
(School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China)
Xiaolin Meng
Affiliation:
(Nottingham Geospatial Institute, the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK)
Wang Gao
Affiliation:
(School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing, China)
Shengli Wang
Affiliation:
(School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China) (School of Surveying and Mapping Engineering, Anhui University of Science & Technology, Huainan, China)
Alan Dodson
Affiliation:
(Nottingham Geospatial Institute, the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK)
*

Abstract

Maintaining good positioning performance has always been a challenging task for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) applications in partially obstructed environments. A method that can optimise positioning performance in harsh environments is proposed. Using a carrier double-difference (DD) model, the influence of the satellite-pair geometry on the correlation among different equations has been researched. This addresses the critical relationship between DD equations and its ill-posedness. From analysing the collected multi-constellation observations, a strong correlation between the condition number and the positioning standard deviation is detected as the correlation coefficient is larger than 0·92. Based on this finding, a new method for determining the reference satellites by using the minimum condition number rather than the maximum elevation is proposed. This reduces the ill-posedness of the co-factor matrix, which improves the single-epoch positioning solution with a fixed DD ambiguity. Finally, evaluation trials are carried out by masking some satellites to simulate common satellite obstruction scenarios including azimuth shielding, elevation shielding and strip shielding. Results indicate the proposed approach improves the positioning stability with multi-constellation satellites notably in harsh environments.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 2014 

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