The functional model of Global Positioning System (GPS) troposphere tomography consists of three types of equations including the observation equation, the horizontal constraint equation, and the vertical constraint equation. The prerequisite for ensuring the accuracy of troposphere tomography modeling is to determine the optimal weights for the three types of equations. In order to reasonably determine the weights among these equations, this paper proposes an optimal weighting method. Compared to the conventional equal weighting scheme and constant weighting scheme, the method proposed in this paper can adaptively adjust the weights for various equations and enable the posterior unit weight variances for the three types of equations that achieve statistically equal. Numerical results under various weather conditions showed that the proposed method can significantly improve the accuracy of GPS tomography modeling with the GPS PPP-estimated slant tropospheric delay as reference when compared to the other two conventional methods. Index Terms-GlobalPositioning System (GPS) troposphere tomography, optimal weighting method, posterior unit weight variance, slant tropospheric delay.

Due to the great influence of multipath effect, noise, clock and error on pseudorange, the carrier phase double difference equation is widely used in high-precision indoor pseudolite positioning. The initial position is determined mostly by the known point initialization (KPI) method, and then the ambiguities can be fixed with the LAMBDA method. In this paper, a new method without using the KPI to achieve high-precision indoor pseudolite positioning is proposed. The initial coordinates can be quickly obtained to meet the accuracy requirement of the indoor LAMBDA method. The detailed processes of the method follows: Aiming at the low-cost single-frequency pseudolite system, the static differential pseudolite system (DPL) method is used to obtain the low-accuracy positioning coordinates of the rover station quickly. Then, the ambiguity function method (AFM) is used to search for the coordinates in the corresponding epoch. The real coordinates obtained by AFM can meet the initial accuracy requirement of the LAMBDA method, so that the double difference carrier phase ambiguities can be correctly fixed. Following the above steps, high-precision indoor pseudolite positioning can be realized. Several experiments, including static and dynamic tests, are conducted to verify the feasibility of the new method. According to the results of the experiments, the initial coordinates with the accuracy of decimeter level through the DPL can be obtained. For the AFM part, both a one-meter search scope and two-centimeter or four-centimeter search steps are used to ensure the precision at the centimeter level and high search efficiency. After dealing with the problem of multiple peaks caused by the ambiguity cosine function, the coordinate information of the maximum ambiguity function value (AFV) is taken as the initial value of the LAMBDA, and the ambiguities can be fixed quickly. The new method provides accuracies at the centimeter level for dynamic experiments and at the millimeter level for static ones.

Water vapor is an important driving factor in the related weather processes in the troposphere, and its temporal-spatial distribution and change are crucial to the formation of cloud and rainfall. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) water vapor tomography, which can reconstruct the water vapor distribution using GNSS observation data, plays an increasingly important role in GNSS meteorology. In this paper, a method to improve the distribution of observations in GNSS water vapor tomography is proposed to overcome the problem of the relatively concentrated distribution of observations, enable satellite signal rays to penetrate more tomographic voxels, and improve the issue of overabundance of zero elements in a tomographic matrix. Numerical results indicate that the accuracy of the water vapor tomography is improved by the proposed method when the slant water vapor calculated by GAMIT is used as a reference. Comparative results of precipitable water vapor (PWV) and water vapor density (WVD) profiles from radiosonde station data indicate that the proposed method is superior to the conventional method in terms of the mean absolute error (MAE), standard deviations (STD), and root-mean-square error (RMS). Further discussion shows that the ill-condition of tomographic equation and the richness of data in the tomographic model need to be discussed separately.

The delays of radio signals transmitted by global navigation satellite system (GNSS) satellites and induced by neutral atmosphere, which are usually represented by zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD), are required as critical information both for GNSS positioning and navigation and GNSS meteorology. Establishing a stable and reliable ZTD model is one of the interests in GNSS research. In this study, we proposed a regional ZTD model that makes full use of the ZTD calculated from regional GNSS data and the corresponding ZTD estimated by global pressure and temperature 3 (GPT3) model, adopting the artificial neutral network (ANN) to construct the correlation between ZTD derived from GPT3 and GNSS observations. The experiments in Hong Kong using Satellite Positioning Reference Station Network (SatRet) were conducted and three statistical values, i.e., bias, root mean square error (RMSE), and compound relative error (CRE) were adopted for our comparisons. Numerical results showed that the proposed model outperformed the parameter ZTD model (Saastamoinen model) and the empirical ZTD model (GPT3 model), with an approximately 56%/52% and 52%/37% RMSE improvement in the internal and external accuracy verification, respectively. Moreover, the proposed method effectively improved the systematic deviation of GPT3 model and achieved better ZTD estimation in both rainy and rainless conditions.

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The global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based attitude determination system has attracted more and more attention with the advantages of having simplified algorithms, a low price and errors that do not accumulate over time. However, GNSS signals may have poor quality or lose lock in some epochs with the influence of signal fading and the multipath effect. When the direct attitude determination method is applied, the primary baseline may not be available (ambiguity is not fixed), leading to the inability of attitude determination. With the gradual popularization of low-cost receivers, making full use of spatial redundancy information of multiple antennas brings new ideas to the GNSS-based attitude determination method. In this paper, an attitude angle conversion algorithm, selecting an arbitrary baseline as the primary baseline, is derived. A multi-antenna attitude determination method based on primary baseline switching is proposed, which is performed on a self-designed embedded software and hardware platform. The proposed method can increase the valid epoch proportion and attitude information. In the land vehicle test, reference results output from a high-accuracy integrated navigation system were used to evaluate the accuracy and reliability. The results indicate that the proposed method is correct and feasible. The valid epoch proportion is increased by 16.2%, which can effectively improve the availability of attitude determination. The RMS of the heading, pitch and roll angles are 0.52°, 1.25° and 1.16°.

Accurate dynamic characteristics of super high-rise buildings serve as a guide in their construction and operation. Ground-based real aperture radar (GB-RAR) techniques have been applied in monitoring and analyzing the dynamic characteristics of different buildings, but only few studies have utilized them to derive the dynamic characteristics of super high-rise buildings, especially those higher than 400 m and under construction. In this study, we proposed a set of technical methods for monitoring and analyzing the dynamic characteristics of super high-rise buildings based on GB-RAR and wavelet analysis. A case study was conducted on the monitoring and analysis of the dynamic characteristics of the Wuhan Greenland Center (WGC) under construction (5–7 July 2017) with a 636 m design height. Displacement time series was accurately derived through GB-RAR and wavelet analysis, and the accuracy reached the submillimeter level. The maximum horizontal displacement amplitudes at the top of the building in the north–south and east–west directions were 18.84 and 15.94 mm, respectively. The roof displacement trajectory of the WGC was clearly identified. A certain negative correlation between the temperature and displacement changes at the roof of the building was identified. Study results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective for the dynamic monitoring and analysis of super high-rise buildings with noninvasive and nondestructive characteristics.

Featured Application: This work is potentially applied to indoor high-precision engineering/ industrial measurement, such as parts installation, tunnel engineering, dynamic rail inspection, path planning, etc. Especially in case of pseudolite faulty, the reliability and availability of positioning can be guaranteed. Abstract:The integrity monitoring algorithm based on pseudorange observations has been widely used outdoors and plays an important role in ensuring the reliability of positioning. However, pseudorange observations are greatly affected by the error sources such as multipath, clock drift, and noise in indoor pseudolite system, thus the pseudorange observations cannot be applied to high-precision indoor positioning. In general, double differenced (DD) carrier phase observations are used to obtain a high-precision indoor positioning result. What's more, the carrier phase-based integrity monitoring (CRAIM) algorithm is applied to identify and exclude potential faults of the pseudolites. In this article, a holistic method is proposed to ensure the accuracy and reliability of positioning results. Firstly, if the reference pseudolite operates normally, extended Kalman filter is used for parameter estimation on the premise that the number of common pseudolites meets positioning requirements. Secondly, the innovation sequence in the Kalman filter is applied to construct test statistics and the corresponding threshold is determined from the Chi distribution with a given probability of false alert. The pseudolitehorizontal protection level (HPL) is calculated by the threshold and a prior probability of missed detection. Finally, compared the test statistics with the threshold to exclude the faultypseudolite for the reliability of positioning. The experiment results show that the proposed method improves the accuracy and stability of the results through faults detection and exclusion. This method ensures accuracies at the centimeter level for dynamic experiments and millimeter levels for static ones.