Characteristics of the BDS-3 multipath effect and mitigation methods using precise point positioning

Multipath effect is one of the main challenges of precise point positioning (PPP) in complex environments. Nowadays, the BeiDou global navigation satellite system (BDS-3) constellation was fully operational. We evaluated the multipath characteristics of BDS-3 open-service signals. The results indicate that the B2a signal had the best anti-multipath performance, and B1C signal had the worst capability. Since BDS-3 satellites with different orbital types have different orbital repeat time, the traditional method based on multipath time-domain repeatability is complicated to alleviate the multipath error on BDS-3 satellites. In contrast, the multipath spatial-domain repeatability method does not need to calculate the orbital repeat times and is only related to the position of the satellite in the sky. It has the advantages of simple algorithm and easy implementation. We selected a multipath hemispherical map (MHM) and a MHM based on trend-surface analysis (T-MHM) to evaluate the effects of BDS-3 PPP multipath correction. The positioning results for the inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites, which were separately modeled and corrected, are slightly better than those obtained when they were modeled and corrected together. Compared with the uncorrected multipath, the positioning accuracy of B1I/B3I and B1C/B2a ionospheric-free (IF) combinations using the MHM can be improved by 52.7% and 51.6% and the convergence time can be shortened by 48.6% and 57.5%, respectively. The positioning accuracy of B1I/B3I and B1C/B2a IF combinations using the T-MHM can be improved by 67% and 66.9% and the convergence time can be shortened by 69.3% and 76.5%, respectively. The T-MHM introduces trend-surface analysis to model the spatial variation of the multipath inside the grid, which effectively alleviates high-frequency and low-frequency multipath. This study is of great significance for further improvements to the application of BDS-3 in complex environments.