Benefit of Partial L2C Availability to Estimate Ionospheric Delay for Dual-frequency GPS Ambiguity Resolution

D. Wang, K. O'Keefe

Abstract:	This paper evaluates the benefit of the partial availability of GPS satellites with L2C signal capability in estimating the ionospheric delay using the dual-frequency L1/L2 code and phase measurements using real data. Compared to the strategy of estimating one slant ionospheric delay (SID) for each satellite, a simplified single differential zenith ionospheric delay (ZID) method is proposed to account for the ionospheric effect using the limited number of L2C measurements. The algorithms and models are implemented in a Kalman filter (KF) based code and phase observations processor using between receiver single difference (SD) GPS L1/L2 observations. Using data sets from three International GNSS Service (IGS) stations with both L2C and L2P code measurements, the performance of using L1 observations only, L1/L2 dual-frequency observations without estimating ionospheric delay, and L1/L2 dual-frequency observations with estimating either SID or differential ZID is compared in terms of ambiguity resolution (AR) and positioning accuracy in conjunction with ionospheric delay estimation. The results show L1/L2 AR outperforms L1 only in several scenarios, and the proposed method improves vertical accuracy of the fixed position approximately 10 cm with estimating the single differential ZID.
Published in:	Proceedings of IEEE/ION PLANS 2010 May 4 - 6, 2010 Renaissance Esmeralda Resort & Spa Indian Wells, CA
Pages:	44 - 52
Cite this article:	Wang, D., O'Keefe, K., "Benefit of Partial L2C Availability to Estimate Ionospheric Delay for Dual-frequency GPS Ambiguity Resolution," Proceedings of IEEE/ION PLANS 2010, Indian Wells, CA, May 2010, pp. 44-52. https://doi.org/10.1109/PLANS.2010.5507199
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