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On August 2016, the Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) satellites started to broadcast ephemeris in navigation message for testing purposes. As the Galileo constellation is not yet complete. It is very important to have two more satellites available since the position accuracy increases as the number of visible satellites increases. In this article, we examine how the inclusion of the Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) satellites impacts the position accuracy. The analysis was carried out on 20 days of 1-Hz observations collected by a receiver placed in YEL2IGS (International GNSS service) station. Two different scenarios are considered: the first excludes the measurements coming from the analyzed satellites, while the second one includes them. The analysis was conducted by using a suitable software tool developed in the MATLAB® environment able to compute satellites position from both the broadcast and precise ephemerides, to assess DOP (Dilution Of Precision) parameters and to compute single-point positioning for all Galileo frequencies. The analyses are conducted by using both broadcast and precise ephemeris. The inclusion of the two satellites improves the system availability, varying it from 94.1–97.94%, the DOP parameters, and the percentages of achieved positioning solutions by about 5% regardless of the frequency used. Nevertheless, in the positioning domain, when the broadcast ephemerides are used, the inclusion of the satellites worsens both the horizontal and vertical accuracy of the solution. The deterioration of the horizontal accuracy goes from 0.17 m with E5a frequency measurements to 0.74 m with E1 measurements. The reduction of vertical accuracy goes from 0.68 m for E5a to 1.2 m for E1 measurements. However, if precise ephemerides are used, both the horizontal and the vertical accuracy remain stable, actually for the E5b frequency, the DRMS (Distance Root Mean Squared) improves by almost 0.5 m. The results achieved show that the real drawback to overcome is related to the quality of broadcast ephemeris as, when precise ephemeris are used, the number of solutions achieved is increased by about 5% with an accuracy similar to that obtained when the satellites are excluded. Full article

In August 2016, Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) satellites started to broadcast ephemeris in navigation message for testing purposes. If these satellites could be used, an improvement in the position accuracy would be achieved. A small error in the ephemeris would impact the accuracy of positioning up to ±2.5 m, thus orbit error must be assessed. The ephemeris quality was evaluated by calculating the SISE_orbit (in orbit Signal In Space Error) using six different ephemeris validity time thresholds (14,400 s, 10,800 s, 7200 s, 3600 s, 1800 s, and 900 s). Two different periods of 2018 were analyzed by using IGS products: DOYs 52–71 and DOYs 172–191. For the first period, two different types of ephemeris were used: those received in IGS YEL2 station and the BRDM ones. Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) satellites show a higher SISE_orbit than the others. If validity time is reduced, the SISE_orbit RMS of Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) greatly decreases differently from the other satellites, for which the improvement, although present, is small. Milena (E14) and Doresa (E18) reach a SISE_orbit RMS of about 1 m (comparable to that of the other Galileo satellites reach with the nominal validity time) when validity time of 1800 s is used. Therefore, using this threshold, the two satellites could be used to improve single point positioning accuracy. Full article