Ionospheric delay is a significant error source in multi-GNSS positioning. We present different processing strategies to fully exploit the ionospheric delay effects on multi-frequency and multi-GNSS positioning performance, including standard point positioning (SPP) and precise point positioning (PPP) scenarios. Datasets collected from 10 stations over thirty consecutive days provided by multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) stations were used for single-frequency SPP/PPP and dual-frequency PPP tests with quad-constellation signals. The experimental results show that for single-frequency SPP, the Global Ionosphere Maps (GIMs) correction achieves the best accuracy, and the accuracy of the Neustrelitz TEC model (NTCM) solution is better than that of the broadcast ionospheric model (BIM) in the E and U components. Eliminating ionospheric parameters by observation combination is equivalent to estimating the parameters in PPP. Compared with the single-frequency uncombined (UC) approach, the average convergence time of PPP with the external ionospheric models is reduced. The improvement in BIM-, NTCM- and GIM-constrained quad-constellation L2 single-frequency PPP was 15.2%, 24.8% and 28.6%, respectively. The improvement in convergence time of dual-frequency PPP with ionospheric models was different for different constellations and the GLONASS-only solution showed the least improvement. The improvement in the convergence time of BIM-, NTCM- and GIM-constrained quad-constellation L1/L2 dual-frequency PPP was 5.2%, 6.2% and 8.5%, respectively, compared with the UC solution. The positioning accuracy of PPP is slightly better with the ionosphere constraint and the performance of the GIM-constrained PPP is the best. The combination of multi-GNSS can effectively improve the positioning performance.

With the launch of BDS-3 and Galileo new satellites, the BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) has developed from the regional to global system, and the Galileo constellation will consist of 26 satellites in space. Thus, BDS, GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo all have the capability of global positioning services. It is meaningful to evaluate the ability of global precise point positioning (PPP) of the GPS, BDS, GLONASS, and Galileo. This paper mainly contributes to the assessment of BDS-2, BDS-2/BDS-3, GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo PPP with the observations that were provided by the international Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Monitoring and Assessment System (iGMAS). The Position Dilution of Precision (PDOP) value was utilized to research the global coverage of GPS, BDS-2, BDS-2/BDS-3, GLONASS, and Galileo. In particular, GPS-only, BDS-2-only, BDS-2/BDS-3, GLONASS-only, Galileo-only, and multi-GNSS combined PPP solutions were analyzed to verify the capacity of the PPP performances in terms of positioning accuracy, convergence time, and zenith troposphere delay (ZTD) accuracy. In view of PDOP, the current BDS and Galileo are capable of global coverage. The BDS-2/BDS-3 and Galileo PDOP values are fairly evenly distributed around the world similar to GPS and GLONASS. The root mean square (RMS) of positioning errors for static BDS-2/BDS-3 PPP and Galileo-only PPP are 10.7, 19.5, 20.4 mm, and 6.9, 18.6, 19.6 mm, respectively, in the geographic area of the selected station, which is the same level as GPS and GLONASS. It is worth mentioning that, by adding BDS-3 observations, the positioning accuracy of static BDS PPP is improved by 17.05%, 24.42%, and 35.65%, and the convergence time is reduced by 27.15%, 27.87%, and 35.76% in three coordinate components, respectively. Similar to the static positioning, GPS, BDS-2/BDS-3, GLONASS, and Galileo have the basically same kinematic positioning accuracy. Multi-GNSS PPP significantly improves the positioning performances in both static and kinematic positioning. In terms of ZTD accuracy, the difference between GPS, BDS-2/BDS-3, GLONASS, and Galileo is less than 1 mm, and the BDS-2/BDS-3 improves ZTD accuracy by 20.48% over the BDS-2. The assessment of GPS, BDS-2, BDS-2/BDS-3, GLONASS, Galileo, and multi-GNSS global PPP performance are shown to make comments for the development of multi-GNSS integration, global precise positioning, and the construction of iGMAS.

The development of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) brings the benefit of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services with three or even more available frequency signals. This paper developed five-system multi-frequency precise point positioning (PPP) models based on mathematical and stochastic models. Static positioning performances were evaluated and analyzed with multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) network datasets and a vehicle-borne kinematic experiment was conducted to verify the kinematic PPP performances. In addition, the receiver clock, zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD), inter-frequency bias (IFB) and differential code bias (DCB) estimates were discussed. Results show that the triple-frequency PPP performances perform slightly better than the dual-frequency solutions, apart from the GPS-related PPP models based on a single ionosphere-free (IF) combined measurement. By introducing the external ionospheric products, the mean convergence time is reduced. For instance, the mean convergence time of ionosphere-constrained (IC) multi-frequency PPP is reduced by 7.4% from 35.7 to 33.1 min and by 19.0% from 7.8 to 6.3 min, for Galileo-only and five-constellation solutions, respectively, compared with dual-frequency IF PPP models. Similarly, the kinematic PPP can also achieve improved performances with more frequency signals and multi-GNSS observations.

A common practice adopted for the pseudorange bias estimation and calibration assumes that Global Navigation Satellite System satellite-dependent pseudorange biases vary gently over time. Whereupon satellite pseudorange biases are routinely estimated and provided as the products with low temporal resolution, e.g., hourly or daily, by the agencies. The story sounds unquestionably perfect under the acquainted assumption. To validate the inadequacy of the above hypothesis we herein present an approach to the estimate the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) pseudorange biases with high temporal resolution. Its feasibility, affecting factors, and necessity are discussed. Concretely, the Geometry-Free function models are first constructed to retrieve the linear combination of the pseudorange biases; then the pseudorange Observable-specific Signal Bias (OSB) values with respect to baseline frequencies (e.g., BDS C2I/C6I) are estimated along with the ionosphere modeling; subsequently, all multi-frequency pseudorange OSBs are determined by using the ionospheric information with constraint conditions; finally, the possible Differential Code Bias sets are attainable with the estimated pseudorange OSBs. Using the observation data of four months when the estimated BDS pseudorange biases are stable, their reliability is demonstrated with the stability at the level of sub-nanosecond and the BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3) values more stable than that of BeiDou-2 Navigation Satellite System (BDS-2). The comparison between the estimated pseudorange biases and the Chinese Academy of Sciences products reveals that the accuracy of the estimated pseudorange biases is 0.2–0.4 ns. Moreover, the large magnitude of the short-term pseudorange bias variation in the tens of nanoseconds for the BDS-2 and BDS-3 are found in years 2021 and 2022, which are affected by two types of the satellite flex power for the BDS-2 and BDS-3, respectively. We stress that it’s necessary to estimate the BDS pseudorange biases with high temporal resolution in the case of the satellite flex power and the products currently provided by the agencies cannot reflect the true quantity under the circumstance.