The orbital inclination angle of the GLONASS constellation is about 10° larger than that of GPS, Galileo, and BDS. Theoretically, the higher orbital inclination angle could provide better observation geometry in high latitude regions. A wealth of research has investigated the positioning accuracy of GLONASS and its impact on multi-GNSS, but rarely considered the contribution of the GLONASS constellation’s large orbit inclination angle. The performance of GLONASS in different latitude regions is evaluated in both stand-alone mode and integration with GPS in this paper. The performance of GPS is also presented for comparison. Three international GNSS service (IGS) networks located in high, middle, and low latitudes are selected for the current study. Multi-GNSS data between January 2021 and June 2021 are used for the assessment. The data quality check shows that the GLONASS data integrity is significantly lower than that of GPS. The constellation visibility analysis indicates that GLONASS has a much better elevation distribution than GPS in high latitude regions. Both daily double-difference network solutions and daily static Precise Point Positioning (PPP) solutions are evaluated. The statistical analysis of coordinate estimates indicates that, in high latitude regions, GLONASS has a comparable or even better accuracy than that of GPS, and GPS+GLONASS presents the best estimate accuracy; in middle latitude regions, GPS stand-alone constellation provides the best positioning accuracy; in low latitude regions, GLONASS offers the worst accuracy, but the positioning accuracy of GPS+GLONASS is better than that of GPS. The tropospheric estimates of GLONASS do not present a resemblance regional advantage as coordinate estimates, which is worse than that of GPS in all three networks. The PPP processing with combined GPS and GLONASS observations reduces the convergence time and improves the accuracy of tropospheric estimates in all three networks.
The BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3) can provide PPP-B2b satellite-based Precise Point Positioning (PPP) real-time service to the Asia–Pacific region via PPP-B2b signal transmitted from the three Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites. This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the accuracies of the satellite’s precise real-time orbit and clock products, including BDS-3 PPP-B2b precise products and the precise real-time products provided by four IGS centers (CAS, DLR, GFZ, and WHU). In addition, the influences of these real-time precise satellite products on the PPP positioning accuracy with single-frequency and dual-frequencies are also studied. Furthermore, the accuracies of broadcast ephemeris and IGS ultra-rapid products are studied, as well as their impact on PPP accuracies. Results illustrate that the orbits accuracies of PPP-B2b orbits are 9.42 cm, 21.26 cm, and 28.65 cm in the radial, along-track, and cross-track components, which are slightly lower than those of real-time orbits provided by the four IGS centers. However, the accuracy of PPP-B2b clock biases is 0.18 ns, which is higher than those provided by IGS Real-Time Service (RTS). In the static positioning test, the 3D positioning accuracy of B1I+B3I dual-frequencies PPP and B1C single-frequency PPP are centimeter-level while using PPP-B2b service, which is slightly lower in horizontal components compared to those obtained based on IGS RTS products. The results of the dynamic vehicle test indicate that the positioning accuracies of B1I+B2b dual-frequency PPP are about 50 cm and 120 cm in horizontal and vertical components, which are close to those of B2b single-frequency PPP using PPP-B2b service. Generally, the PPP-B2b orbit and clock accuracies on real-time PPP present similar performance to that based on IGS RTS.