Enhanced wide-area multi-GNSS RTK and rapid static positioning in the presence of ionospheric disturbances

Abstract

Ionospheric disturbances are the phenomena which adversely affect the performance of precise positioning. This holds true even for multi-constellation relative positioning supported with network-derived ionospheric corrections. In such scenario the unfavorable effect is caused by a poor accuracy of corrections, which, in turn, is driven by the deterioration of the spatial interpolation process. The positioning becomes even more challenging in a wide-area scenario with baselines over 100 km. In this paper, we assess the methodology which aims at reliable and accurate widearea RTK and rapid static positioning in the presence of severe ionospheric conditions. The approach takes advantage of multi-constellation network ionospheric corrections and an algorithm which allows the elimination of the temporal variations of the ionospheric delay. The experimental evaluation was performed on the basis of multi-station RTK and static positioning using GPS, BDS and Galileo data collected at high latitudes during the ionospheric storm on August 25-26, 2018. The results confirmed the deterioration of the accuracy of the network ionospheric corrections and consequently a decline in the positioning performance with routine models such as ionosphere-float and ionosphereweighted. On the other hand, the results obtained with the application of the developed methodology demonstrated a very distinctive improvement in the ambiguity resolution domain and thus proved the advantage over benchmark models. In this case, the developed methodology allowed up to 20% enhancement of the ambiguity success rate with respect to benchmark strategies.

The implications of ionospheric disturbances for precise GNSS positioning in Greenland

“…That finding is especially evident for the ROTI time series during the storm of August 2018, since the southern stations exhibit several times higher ROTI than the northern ones and reach values even higher than those during the St. Patrick's Day storm. The reason for such strong amplification of ROTI during the main phase of the storm in 2018 is the occurrence of small and medium irregularities resulting from auroral precipitation and the position of the latter directly above the test network (Paziewski and Sieradzki, 2020). The detailed analysis of ionospheric conditions given in that study confirmed that the polar part of the ionosphere was relatively quiet in this case.…”

“…Respective research on this topic was conducted, for example, by Wanninger (Wanninger, 2004), who proposed to use the I95 index that provides statistical information to support RTK and N-RTK, and by Park et al (Park et al, 2017), who refined the stochastic model of RTK positioning and exploited Total Electron Content (TEC) maps. The feasibility of precise long-range positioning with an enhanced RTK model under the ionospheric disturbance was reported in (Sieradzki and Paziewski, 2016;Paziewski and Sieradzki, 2020). Additionally, Vadakke Veettil et al (Vadakke Veettil et al, 2020) refined the stochastic model of DF PPP to meet the challenges of GNSS positioning in the ionospheric scintillation environment.…”

GNSS/IMU Sensor Fusion Performance Comparison of a Car Localization in Urban Environment Using Extended Kalman Filter

“…With this rapid development of GNSS, multi-GNSS and multi-frequency Precise Point Positioning (PPP) and Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) technologies have IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1127/1/012006 2 been extensively researched to enable high-precision positioning [2,3]. Positioning accuracy in RTK mode can also be improved to centimeter levels, for example by using dual antennas with baseline constraint vector [4], utlilize multi-station RTK and rate of TEC correction [5], or enhance strategy to determine stochastic model of observation [6]. Besides that, there has been a solution to reduce the cost of GNSS observation through the increasing availability of low-cost GNSS in recent years.…”

Performance research of real-time kinematic/5G combined positioning model

“…RTK can effectively weaken ionospheric and tropospheric delay errors, eliminate errors such as hardware delays at the satellite and receiver, maintain whole-cycle characteristics of ambiguity, and provide centimeter-level solution results with good satellite visibility [4][5][6][7]. In addition, RTK can realize high-precision positioning in low-cost terminals such as smartphones, providing smartphone users with centimeterlevel positioning in outdoor environments [8][9][10][11].…”