A geometry-free and ionosphere-free multipath mitigation method for BDS three-frequency ambiguity resolution

Because of the unknown systematic errors and special satellite constellations in the Beidou system (BDS), it is difficult to quickly and reliably determine the ambiguity over long-range baselines in continuously operating reference station (CORS) network. This study seeks to improve the effectiveness and reliability of BDS ambiguity resolution (AR) by combining the geometry-free and ionosphere-free (GFIF) combination and multipath mitigation algorithm. The GFIF combination composed with three-frequency signals is free of distance-dependent errors and can be used to determine the narrow lane ambiguity. The presence of multipath errors means that not all ambiguities can be correctly achieved by rounding the averaged GFIF ambiguity series. A multipath model of the single-differenced (SD) GFIF combination from the previous period is established for each individual satellite. This model is subtracted from the SD GFIF combination for the current day to remove the effects of multipath errors. Using three triangle networks with lengths of approximately 120, 80 and 50 km, we demonstrate that the proposed method improves the AR performance. The ambiguity averaged first fixing time is typically less than 1801 s for inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites and less than 2007 s for the similar to 42 degrees elevation geostationary earth orbit (GEO) C02 satellite. However, it is more time consuming for the low-elevation GEO satellites C04 (similar to 18 degrees) and C05 (similar to 28 degrees). Kalman filtering is used to estimate the troposphere delays and two unfixed ambiguities by employing the ionosphere-free observations of all ambiguity-fixed/unfixed satellites. The experimental results show that only tens of seconds are required for AR in around 90 km baselines.