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Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Engineering Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2021) | Viewed by 19659

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department Electrical and Computer Engineeing, Engineering School, Inha University, Incheon 22212, Republic of Korea
Interests: GNSS signal design; receiver and signal processing; autonomous driving
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Institute of Space Technology and Space Applications, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39, 85577 Neubiberg, Germany
Interests: navigation; GNSS; signal processing; inertial navigation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, the multi-frequency and multi-constellation global navigation satellite system (GNSS) has played an important role in reliable navigation and positioning, which are essential in modern human life. Significant technological development is provided by GNSS equipment in some cases even at low-cost, which can collect accurate measurements at much higher rates. This provides new possibilities for the use of sophisticated methods, developed in the field of high-precision and geoscience applications, for practical applications of various grades of GNSS receivers. Algorithmic advancements are a key factor for the opportunities and challenges in enhancing the accuracy, availability, interoperability, and integrity of a range of practical GNSS applications.

A Special Issue of the open access journal Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292) has been launched, with a focus on ‘Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation’. This issue will address advances in GNSS technology for a range of practical applications and research investigations. We encourage both theoretical and applied research contributions on the use of GNSS technology in all disciplines. Such contributions can be focused on various aspects, including, but not limited to, receivers, positioning algorithms, important contemporary applications, and software tool developments for data collection and processing, as well as their applications in various fields:

  • GNSS technology
  • Data calibration/validation and retrieval approaches
  • GNSS algorithms and applications for remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, and applications
  • GNSS+R theory and modeling
  • High-precision GNSS methods
  • Advances in GNSS signal processing and theoretical modeling
  • Design, prototyping, and testing of positioning devices
  • Space Service Volume (SSV) applications
  • GNSS applications to position, navigation, and timing-based devices and services

We invite you to submit your original full papers on the most recent results and technology trends in the field of advances in GNSS data processing and navigation. Submitted papers must represent original material that is not currently under review in any other journals, and has not been previously published.

Prof. Jong-Hoon Won
Professor Thomas Pany
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 6150 KiB  
Article
GNSS Signal Availability Analysis in SSV for Geostationary Satellites Utilizing multi-GNSS with First Side Lobe Signal over the Korean Region
by Gun-Hoon Ji, Ki-Ho Kwon and Jong-Hoon Won
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(19), 3852; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13193852 - 26 Sep 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3171
Abstract
This paper verifies the applicability of multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) and side lobe signal utilization in Space Service Volume (SSV), especially for Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) missions over the Korean region. Unlike the ground or terrestrial systems, various constraints of space [...] Read more.
This paper verifies the applicability of multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) and side lobe signal utilization in Space Service Volume (SSV), especially for Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) missions over the Korean region. Unlike the ground or terrestrial systems, various constraints of space exploration in SSV cause a problem when estimating position using GNSS. This is mainly due to the limit of GNSS signal availability where its dominant variables include altitude, side lobe issues, as well as longitude because of different constellations of several GNSS. The numerical simulation shows the effectiveness of additional side lobe signals from multi-GNSS. In addition, the effect of non-MEO satellites’ signals in SSV for different longitudes is presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation)
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18 pages, 4637 KiB  
Article
Global Assessment of the GNSS Single Point Positioning Biases Produced by the Residual Tropospheric Delay
by Ling Yang, Jinfang Wang, Haojun Li and Timo Balz
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(6), 1202; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13061202 - 22 Mar 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3291
Abstract
The tropospheric delay is one of the main error sources that degrades the accuracy of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Single Point Positioning (SPP). Although an empirical model is usually applied for correction and thereby to improve the positioning accuracy, the residual tropospheric [...] Read more.
The tropospheric delay is one of the main error sources that degrades the accuracy of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Single Point Positioning (SPP). Although an empirical model is usually applied for correction and thereby to improve the positioning accuracy, the residual tropospheric delay is still drowned in measurement noise, and cannot be further compensated by parameter estimation. How much this type of residual error would sway the SPP positioning solutions on a global scale are still unclear. In this paper, the biases on SPP solutions introduced by the residual tropospheric delay when using nine conventionally Zenith Tropospheric Delay (ZTD) models are analyzed and discussed, including Saastamoinen+norm/Global Pressure and Temperature (GPT)/GPT2/GPT2w/GPT3, University of New Brunswick (UNB)3/UNB3m, European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) and Vienna Mapping Functions (VMF)3 models. The accuracies of the nine ZTD models, as well as the SPP biases caused by the residual ZTD (dZTD) after model correction are evaluated using International GNSS Service (IGS)-ZTD products from around 400 globally distributed monitoring stations. The seasonal, latitudinal, and altitudinal discrepancies are analyzed respectively. The results show that the SPP solution biases caused by the dZTD mainly occur on the vertical direction, nearly to decimeter level, and significant discrepancies are observed among different models at different geographical locations. This study provides references for the refinement and applications of the nine ZTD models for SPP users. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation)
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14 pages, 1719 KiB  
Article
GNSS Receiver-Related Pseudorange Biases: Characteristics and Effects on Wide-Lane Ambiguity Resolution
by Lingyue Cheng, Wei Wang, Jingnan Liu, Yifei Lv and Tao Geng
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(3), 428; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13030428 - 26 Jan 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3040
Abstract
Satellite chip shape distortions lead to signal tracking errors in pseudorange measurements, which are related to the receiver manufacturers, called receiver-related pseudorange biases. Such biases will lead to adverse effects for differential code bias (DCB) and satellite clock estimation, single point positioning (SPP) [...] Read more.
Satellite chip shape distortions lead to signal tracking errors in pseudorange measurements, which are related to the receiver manufacturers, called receiver-related pseudorange biases. Such biases will lead to adverse effects for differential code bias (DCB) and satellite clock estimation, single point positioning (SPP) and precise point positioning (PPP) applications with pseudoranges. In order to assess the characteristics of receiver-related pseudorange biases for global positioning system (GPS), Galileo navigation satellite system (Galileo) and BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS), seven short baselines from the Multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) network are tested. The results demonstrate that there are significant inconsistences of pseudorange biases according to satellites, frequencies, receiver and antenna types. For the baselines using the same receivers of TRIMBLE, pseudorange biases are within ±0.2 ns with the same antennas, while they increase to ±0.6 ns with the different antennas. As for baselines with mixed receiver types, pseudorange biases can reach up to 2.5 ns. Among GPS/Galileo/BDS, Galileo shows the smallest pseudorange biases, and the obvious inconsistences of pseudorange biases are observed between BDS-2 and BDS-3, and Galileo in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites and full operational configuration (FOC) satellites. In order to validate receiver-related pseudorange biases, we carry out relative positioning experiments using short baselines. The results show that the RMS values of position errors are reduced 12.6% and 11.4% in horizontal and vertical components with biases correction. The impacts of receiver-related pseudorange biases on wide-lane (WL) ambiguity are also discussed. The results indicate that the percentage of the fractional parts within ±0.1 cycles have an obvious increase with the pseudorange biases correction, and RMS values of the fractional parts are reduced 28.9% and 67.6% for GPS and BDS, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation)
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17 pages, 2615 KiB  
Article
Long Baseline Tightly Coupled DGNSS Positioning with Ionosphere-Free Inter-System Bias Calibration
by Jianhua Cheng, Chao Jiang, Liang Li, Chun Jia, Bing Qi and Jiaxiang Li
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(1), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13010067 - 26 Dec 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2302
Abstract
Based on the statistical stability of the inter-system bias (ISB), we propose a tightly coupled Differential Global Navigation Satellite System (DGNSS) positioning method by using ionosphere-free combination for the long baseline applications. The proposed method is compatible with the traditional Radio Beacon (RBN) [...] Read more.
Based on the statistical stability of the inter-system bias (ISB), we propose a tightly coupled Differential Global Navigation Satellite System (DGNSS) positioning method by using ionosphere-free combination for the long baseline applications. The proposed method is compatible with the traditional Radio Beacon (RBN) base station implementation. The tightly coupled DGNSS positioning method is utilized at the long baseline rover by eliminating the effect of ionosphere delay with ionosphere-free (IF) based differential ISB calibration. The improved positioning model strength can be obtained with the proposed method when compared with the traditional loosely coupled method, particularly under the satellite-deprived environment. GNSS datasets of different baselines were collected to test the proposed method. The results of the ISB stability show that the ISB has long-term stability and needs to be calibrated when the receiver is rebooted. The positioning results show that when compared with the IF-based loosely coupled method, the IF-based tightly coupled DGNSS method based on ISB calibration can obtain better positioning performance of accuracy and continuity within 240 km baselines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation)
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17 pages, 4012 KiB  
Article
Carrier Phase-Based Ionospheric Gradient Monitor Under the Mixed Gaussian Distribution
by Jianhua Cheng, Jiaxiang Li, Liang Li, Chao Jiang and Bing Qi
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(23), 3915; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12233915 - 28 Nov 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2142
Abstract
Anomalous ionospheric gradient is a critical risk to be monitored by ground-based augmentation systems (GBASs) utilized for safety-of-life navigation applications. A dual-frequency carrier phase-based ionospheric gradient monitoring method is proposed under the mixed Gaussian distribution. The minimum detection error of the proposed method [...] Read more.
Anomalous ionospheric gradient is a critical risk to be monitored by ground-based augmentation systems (GBASs) utilized for safety-of-life navigation applications. A dual-frequency carrier phase-based ionospheric gradient monitoring method is proposed under the mixed Gaussian distribution. The minimum detection error of the proposed method can be greatly reduced by allowing acceptable ambiguity resolution failure modes, given the required averaging length. The real BeiDou navigation satellite system data were utilized to test the proposed method. The experimental results showed that the minimum detection error (MDE) of the proposed dual-frequency ionospheric gradient monitoring method can be reduced by at least 30% in comparison with the maximum acceptable anomalous ionospheric gradient of category III GBAS. This study demonstrated that the proposed method can be used to protect against the ionospheric gradient for a ground-based augmentation system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation)
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15 pages, 6831 KiB  
Article
A More Reliable Orbit Initialization Method for LEO Precise Orbit Determination Using GNSS
by Xuewen Gong, Jizhang Sang, Fuhong Wang and Xingxing Li
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(21), 3646; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12213646 - 6 Nov 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2387
Abstract
Precise orbit determination (POD) using GNSS has been rapidly developed and is the mainstream technology for the navigation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The initialization of orbit parameters is a key prerequisite for LEO POD processing. For a LEO satellite equipped with [...] Read more.
Precise orbit determination (POD) using GNSS has been rapidly developed and is the mainstream technology for the navigation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The initialization of orbit parameters is a key prerequisite for LEO POD processing. For a LEO satellite equipped with a GNSS receiver, sufficient discrete kinematic positions can be obtained easily by processing space-borne GNSS data, and its orbit parameters can thus be estimated directly in iterative manner. This method of direct iterative estimation is called as the direct approach, which is generally considered highly reliable, but in practical applications it has risk of failure. Stability analyses demonstrate that the direct approach is sensitive to oversized errors in the starting velocity vector at the reference time, which may lead to large errors in design matrix because the reference orbit may be significantly distorted, and eventually cause the divergence of the orbit parameter estimation. In view of this, a more reliable method, termed the progressive approach, is presented in this paper. Instead of estimating the orbit parameters directly, it first fits the discrete kinematic positions to a reference ephemeris in the form of the GNSS broadcast ephemeris, which construct a reference orbit that is smooth and close to the true orbit. Based on the reference orbit, the starting orbit parameters are computed in sufficient accuracy, and then the final orbit parameters are estimated with a high accuracy by using discrete kinematic positions as measurements. The stability analyses show that the design matrix errors are reduced in the progressive approach, which would assure more robust orbit parameter estimation than the direct estimation approach. Various orbit initialization experiments are performed on the KOMPSAT-5 and FY3C satellites. The results have fully verified the high reliability of the proposed progressive approach. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation)
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18 pages, 6667 KiB  
Article
An Improved Multi-Satellite Method for Evaluating Real-Time BDS Satellite Clock Offset Products
by Zhimin Yuan, Changsheng Cai, Lin Pan and Cuilin Kuang
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(21), 3638; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12213638 - 5 Nov 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1841
Abstract
Two methods are widely used for evaluating the precision of satellite clock products, namely the single-satellite method (SSM) and the multi-satellite method (MSM). In the satellite clock product evaluation, an important issue is how to eliminate the timescale difference. The SSM selects a [...] Read more.
Two methods are widely used for evaluating the precision of satellite clock products, namely the single-satellite method (SSM) and the multi-satellite method (MSM). In the satellite clock product evaluation, an important issue is how to eliminate the timescale difference. The SSM selects a reference satellite to eliminate the timescale difference by between-satellite differencing, but its evaluation results are susceptible to the gross errors in the referenced satellite clock offsets. In the MSM, the timescale difference is first estimated and then removed. Unlike the GPS, the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) consists of three types of satellites, namely geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO), inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO), and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites. The three types of satellites have uneven orbital accuracy. In the generation of satellite clock products, the orbital errors are partly assimilated into the clock offsets. If neglecting the orbital accuracy difference of the three types of BeiDou satellites, the MSM will obtain biased estimates of the timescale difference and finally affect the clock product evaluation. In this study, an improved multi-satellite method (IMSM) is proposed for evaluating the real-time BDS clock products by removing the assimilated orbital errors of the three types of BDS satellites when estimating the timescale difference. Three real-time BDS clock products disseminated by three different International GNSS Service (IGS) analysis centers, namely CLK16, CLK20, and CLK93, over a period of two months are used to validate this method. The results indicate that the assimilated orbital errors have a significant impact on the estimation of the timescale difference. Subsequently, the IMSM is compared with the SSM in which the referenced satellite is rigorously chosen, and their RMS difference is only 0.08 ns, which suggests that the evaluation results obtained by the IMSM are accurate. Compared with the traditional MSM, the IMSM improves the RMS by 0.16, 0.11, and 0.07 ns for CLK16, CLK20, and CLK93, respectively. Finally, three real-time BDS clock products are evaluated using the proposed method, and results reveal a significant precision difference among them. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in GNSS Data Processing and Navigation)
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