A quality evaluation of precise products for BDS-3 constellations is presented for the first time in this contribution. Then, the tropospheric delay retrieval and positioning performance of BDS-3 precise point positioning (PPP) solutions using the precise products (gbm, wum, iac, sha, cnt) with observations from 24 stations from DOY 280 to 317 in 2020 was comprehensively investigated. The orbit comparisons present consistencies of 0.09–0.22 m for the C19–C37 satellites and of 0.5–1.2 m for the C38–C46 satellites among the final products. The standard deviation (STD) values of the clock differences of iac showed the best agreement with those of gbm, followed by wum, sha. The clock differences performance of cnt was the worst. For BDS-3 PPP solutions with five Analysis centers (ACs) products, the median convergence times of static PPP mode incorporating the gbm, wum, iac, sha, and cnt products were 31.0, 33.5, 34.5, 37.8, and 72.0 min, respectively; the median convergence times of kinematic PPP model incorporating the same products were 40.5, 41.0, 50.5, 55.0, and 94.0 min, respectively. The positioning accuracies in the static and kinematic modes were approximately 1–4 cm, 2–6 cm in the horizontal and vertical components, respectively. With the final products in kinematic mode, the performance of PPP with real-time products (cnt) is poorer than all PPP with final products. The median of ZTD accuracies of the five products gbm, wum, iac, sha, and cnt were 7.84, 7.58, 7.04, 7.19, and 10.1 mm, respectively, and the accuracy differences were very small among five AC products (gbm, wum, iac, sha).

Due to the fragility of single-sensor positioning technology in complex scenarios, especially in complex urban areas, multi-sensor positioning technology is becoming increasingly popular. To further improve the robustness of the positioning system by fully utilizing the information from various sensors, this article proposes a differential-GNSS-visual-inertial navigation system (DGVINS) that tightly fuses differential global navigation satellite system (GNSS), vision and inertial information to provide accurate, robust and seamless position information for intelligent navigation applications. DGVINS effectively utilizes all sensor measurements within the factor graph optimization framework. When using the carrier phase of GNSS, single-epoch ambiguity optimization is employed to prevent cycle slip detection and adapted to complex environments. We conducted experiments on public datasets with various features and compared the performance of simple differential-GNSS (DGNSS), DGNSS + Inertial, and the state-of-the-art GNSS-visual-inertial navigation systems. We also compared the performance of different combinations of GNSS differential factors in various environments. Due to the superiority of differential GNSS and its appropriate integration with visual and inertial measurements, the experimental results demonstrate that DGVINS exhibits significant improvements in accuracy, stability, and continuity in both GNSS-challenged and vision-challenged environments.

Fast determination of satellite visibility with respect to a target area is important for satellite navigation and positioning. In this paper, we propose an adaptive interpolation algorithm based on vertex protection to solve the satellite visibility period problem more accurately and quickly, where “vertex” refers to the local extremum point. The algorithm can avoid the error in the visibility period calculation caused by skimming the vertices when fitting the multi-hump visibility function under certain fitting accuracy requirements with the traditional adaptive interpolation method. The algorithm does not need to construct a cubic polynomial in each subinterval to determine whether the satellite is visible or not; it only constructs a cubic polynomial to solve the problem if the visibility function of that subinterval is judged to have a solution from the existence theorem of zero points, which can improve the computational efficiency. For the lunar navigation problem, a solution to satellite–Moon visibility calculations based on a vertex-protected adaptive interpolation is given, and the experimental results show that the computation time of the algorithm can be reduced by approximately 98% compared with the brute force method and by approximately 30% compared with the traditional adaptive interpolation algorithm.

To address uncertainties in satellite orbit error prediction, this study proposes a novel ensemble learning-based orbit prediction method specifically designed for the BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS). Building on eph... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on Tech Science Press

High-precision Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning services must accommodate changes in the correction products available to user terminals. PPP-RTK enhances precise point positioning through service-side correction products, but the user-side positioning capability attainable under different correction-product conditions has received limited attention. Building on established undifferenced and uncombined (UDUC) PPP-RTK models, this study develops a multi-tier PPP-RTK positioning method. The user-side configurations denoted SPP, PPP, PPP-AR, and PPP-RTK are organized according to the service-side correction products applied at the user terminal. An end-to-end real-time system was implemented, comprising a PPP-RTK service-side platform and an embedded GNSS positioning device. Real-time experiments characterized the accuracy and convergence behavior of each tier. The PPP-RTK tier achieved 0.72 cm horizontal and 1.78 cm three-dimensional RMS accuracy, with a mean convergence time of 7.08 s. The PPP-AR and PPP tiers converged in 4.27 and 15.98 min, respectively, and provided centimeter- and decimeter-level accuracy, whereas the SPP tier provided meter-level accuracy. Following 40 forced hot restarts, fixed PPP-RTK solutions were re-established in 4.53 s on average. These results support the feasibility of an availability-aware multi-tier GNSS PPP service architecture and inform continuity-oriented GNSS positioning-service design in near-Earth PNT applications.