scholarly journals An In-Depth Assessment of the New BDS-3 B1C and B2a Signals

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 788
Author(s):  
Qinghua Zhang ◽  
Yongxing Zhu ◽  
Zhengsheng Chen

An in-depth and comprehensive assessment of new observations from BDS-3 satellites is presented, with the main focus on the Carrier-to-Noise density ratio (C/N0), the quality of code and carrier phase observations for B1C and B2a signal. The signal characteristics of geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO), inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit (IGSO) and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites of BDS-3 were grouped and compared, respectively. The evaluation results of the new B1C and B2a signals of BDS-3 were compared with the previously B1I/B2I/B3I signals and the interoperable signals of GPS, Galileo and quasi-zenith satellite system (QZSS) were compared simultaneously. As expected, the results clearly show that B1C and B2a have better signal strength and higher accuracy, including code and carrier phase observations. The C/N0 of the B2a signal is about 3 dB higher than other signals. One exception is the code observation accuracy of B3I, which value is less than 0.15 m. The carrier precision of B1C and B2a is better than that of B1I/B2I/B3I. Despite difference-in-difference (DD) observation quantity or zero-base line evaluation is adopted, while B1C is about 0.3 mm higher carrier precision than B2a. The BDS-3 MEO satellite and GPS, Galileo, and QZSS satellites have the same level of signal strength, code and phase observation accuracy at the interoperable frequency, namely 1575.42 MHz and 1176.45 MHz which are very suitable for the co-position application.

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirong Ye ◽  
Yongwei Yan ◽  
Dezhong Chen

The regional part of the current BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) consists of five Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, five Inclined Geosynchronous Satellite Orbit (IGSO) satellites and four Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites. We examined three algorithms for BDS velocity estimation. In addition, the performance of velocity estimation using different BDS satellite combinations was analysed. Static tests demonstrated that velocity precision using Raw Doppler (RD) measurements was of the order of centimetres per second, whereas the carrier-phase-Derived Doppler (DD) measurements and Time-Differenced Carrier Phase (TDCP) method provided accuracies of the order of millimetres per second. Because of the irregularity of the satellites' distribution, three peaks exist on the north component in the 24-hour velocity series. Besides, the GEO satellites contribute significantly in velocity estimation and the satellites' geometry condition seriously declined when excluding GEO satellites. In kinematic tests, the root mean square of the velocity error derived by DD and TDCP both attained the centimetre per second level. Moreover, the precision of velocity determination with these three methods was degraded by the sudden acceleration of the vehicle.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. G. Jin ◽  
R. Jin ◽  
D. Li

Abstract. The differential code bias (DCB) of global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) affects precise ionospheric modeling and applications. In this paper, daily DCBs of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) are estimated and investigated from 2-year multi-GNSS network observations (2013–2014) based on global ionospheric maps (GIMs) from the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE), which are compared with Global Positioning System (GPS) results. The DCB of BDS satellites is a little less stable than GPS solutions, especially for geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellites. The BDS GEO observations decrease the precision of inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit (IGSO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO) DCB estimations. The RMS of BDS satellites DCB decreases to about 0.2 ns when we remove BDS GEO observations. Zero-mean condition effects are not the dominant factor for the higher RMS of BDS satellites DCB. Although there are no obvious secular variations in the DCB time series, sub-nanosecond variations are visible for both BDS and GPS satellites DCBs during 2013–2014. For satellites in the same orbital plane, their DCB variations have similar characteristics. In addition, variations in receivers DCB in the same region are found with a similar pattern between BDS and GPS. These variations in both GPS and BDS DCBs are mainly related to the estimated error from ionospheric variability, while the BDS DCB intrinsic variation is in sub-nanoseconds.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 1339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ju Hong ◽  
Rui Tu ◽  
Rui Zhang ◽  
Lihong Fan ◽  
Pengfei Zhang ◽  
...  

The satellite-induced code bias variation of geostationary satellite orbit satellites and medium earth orbit satellites of the second-generation BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-2) exceeds 1 m, which severely affects the accuracy and stability of the ambiguity resolution and high-precision positioning. With the development of the third-generation BDS (BDS-3) with a new system design and new technology, analysis of the satellite-induced code variation characteristics of BDS-3 has become increasingly important. At present, many scholars have explored the satellite-induced code bias of BDS-3, but most of them focus on BDS-3 experimental satellites via normal geodetic antenna. Compared to normal geodetic antenna, the 40-m dish antenna from the National Time Service Center can accurately detect satellite-induced code variations with low noise and high gain. Thus, observational data from fifteen BDS-3 medium earth orbit satellites are collected with the B1I/B2b/B3I/B1C/B2a frequency bands on the day of year (DOY) 199–206 in 2019, the PRN numbers of which are C19/C20/C21/C22/C23/C24/C25/C26/C27/C28/C30/C32/C33 /C35/C37, via the 40 m dish antenna to analyze the code bias variation characteristics. The results show that the obvious satellite-induced elevation‑dependent code bias variations exist in the B1I/B2b/B3I/B1C/B2a frequency bands of C28, compared with other satellites. Similarly, the multipath (MP) combination of B3I has an obvious elevation‑dependent variation within a range of 0.1 m for C21/C24/C27/C28/C37 and elevation‑dependent variation of the B2a and B2b frequency bands also exists in most satellites with a range of 0.1 m. However, the MP combination values of some satellites are asymmetric with respect to elevation, which is different from BDS-2 satellites and especially obvious for BDS-3 satellites B1I and BIC frequency bands with elevation‑dependent variations of 0.2 m, indicating that the code bias variation is not uniquely related to elevation, especially for the B1I/BIC frequency bands. What’s more, the satellite-induced code bias variation of the BDS-3 satellites is greatly reduced compared with that of the BDS-2 satellites. In addition, the similar code bias variation appears at the Xia1 station with a normal geodetic antenna of B1I/B1C/B3I/B2a/B2b of C21, B3I/B2a/B2b of C24 and B2b of C28 among B1I/B1C/B3I/B2a/B2b of C21/C24/C27/C28/C37. The influence of the BDS-3 satellite-induced elevation‑dependent code bias on precision positioning and ambiguity fixing is worth further study using different antennas or receivers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 2735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Honglei Yang ◽  
Tianhe Xu ◽  
Wenfeng Nie ◽  
Fan Gao ◽  
Meiqian Guan

The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) of China is currently in the hybrid-use period of BDS-2 and BDS-3 satellites. All of them are equipped with Laser Retroreflect Arrays (LRAs) for Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), which can directly obtain an independent, sub-centimetre level of distance measurement. The main purpose of this contribution is to use the solely SLR Normal Points (NPs) data to determinate the precise orbit of BDS-2 and BDS-3 satellites, including one Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), three Inclined Geo-Synchronous Orbits (ISGO), and one Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) of BDS-2 satellites, as well as four MEO of BDS-3 satellites, from 1 January to 30 June 2019. The microwave-based orbit from Wuhan University (WUM) are firstly validated to mark and eliminate the bad SLR observations in our preprocessing stage. Then, the 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-day arc solutions are performed to investigate the impact of the different orbital arc lengths on the quality of SLR-derived orbits and test the optimal solution of the multi-day arc. Moreover, the dependency of SLR-only orbit determination accuracy on the number of SLR observations and the number of SLR sites are discussed to explore the orbit determination quality of the 3-,5-, 7-, and 9-day arc solutions. The results indicate that (1) during the half-year time span of 2019, the overall Root Mean Square (RMS) of SLR validation residuals derived from WUM is 19.0 cm for BDS-2 GEO C01, 5.2–7.3 cm for three BDS-2 IGSO, 3.4 cm for BDS-2 MEO C11, and 4.4–5.7 cm for four BDS-3 MEO satellites respectively. (2) The 9-day arc solutions present the best orbit accuracy in our multi-day SLR-only orbit determination for BDS IGSO and MEO satellites. The 9-day overlaps median RMS of BDS MEO in RTN directions are evaluated at 3.6–5.7, 12.4–21.6, and 15.6–23.9 cm respectively, as well as 5.7–9.6, 15.0–36.8, and 16.5–35.2 cm for the comparison with WUM precise orbits, while these values of BDS IGSO are larger by a factor of about 3–10 than BDS MEO orbits in their corresponding RTN directions. Furthermore, the optimal average 3D-RMS of 9-day overlaps is 0.49 and 1.89 m for BDS MEO and IGSO respectively, as well as 0.55 and 1.85 m in comparison with WUM orbits. Owing to its extremely rare SLR observations, the SLR-only orbit determination accuracy of BDS-2 GEO satellite can only reach a level of 10 metres or worse. (3) To obtain a stable and reliable SLR-only precise orbit, the 7-day to 9-day arc solutions are necessary to provide a sufficient SLR observation quantity and geometry, with more than 50–80 available SLR observations at 5–6 SLR sites that are evenly distributed, both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 5002
Author(s):  
Houzhe Zhang ◽  
Defeng Gu ◽  
Bing Ju ◽  
Kai Shao ◽  
Bin Yi ◽  
...  

The TH-2 satellite system, including the TH-2A and TH-2B, is the first distributed interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) satellite system in China. During the in-orbit operation, the TH-2A satellite should perform three maneuvers per day to keep the formation flying geometry. We estimate those maneuvers in the precise orbit determination (POD) by the GPS and BDS2 measurements on board, respectively. The residuals of the POD show that the effects caused by orbital maneuvers can be well eliminated for both the GPS and BDS2 data. The precision of the BDS2-based POD is better than 8.0 cm in the three-dimensional direction (3D) compared with the orbit derived from the GPS observations. Such a precision level of the satellite orbit satisfies the InSAR mission requirement of the TH-2. In addition, the relative error of velocity changes is employed to evaluate the maneuver estimations by the POD using the regional navigation system of BDS2. The results show that the relative error of velocity changes between the GPS- and BDS2-based POD is less than 7.0%, which indicates that the maneuver performance extracted from the regional BDS2 data is as good as that extracted from the global GPS data. In the GNSS fused processing, we found that the independent receiver clock offsets should be taken into account, since the time tag corrections for the GPS and BDS2 observations collected on the TH-2 spaceborne receivers were different. The precision of the GPS and BDS2 (GC) combined single point positioning (SPP) can be improved by 12–14% compared with the GPS-only solution when the position dilution of precision (PDOP) of GPS exceeds three. The overlap comparisons of the GC combined orbits show that the internal orbit precision of the TH-2 satellites is better than 0.7 cm. However, the improvement of the GC combined POD result is only 3–4% with respect to the GPS-only solution, which is limited to the precision of the precise orbit and clock products of BDS2 at the present stage.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Tang ◽  
Xiufeng He ◽  
Samuel A. Andam-Akorful

With the first phase of COMPASS/BeiDou-2 (BDS) completed, the assessment of positioning performance and the characterization of its system are analyzed and presented. Pseudo-range and carrier phase measurements modulated on B1 and B2 have been collected in Shanghai, from 00:00 to 24:00 on 28 December, 2012. Compared with GPS, visibility and measurement quality of BDS's GEO, IGSO and MEO satellites are analyzed. DOP during the whole orbital period is also analyzed the results demonstrate that BDS's HDOP is better than GPS's one, but VDOP opposite. Furthermore, the result of positioning is also presented and analyzed. Short baselines are estimated by standalone BDS and GPS's carrier phase measurement, respectively, using 48 segmentations of observations during a whole day (24 hours, each segmentation, is about 30 minutes observation). The analysis of static relative positioning demonstrates that BDS could achieve to millimeter level, corresponding to GPS. Kinematic result is produced by double differenced carrier phase observations with the ambiguities fixed under the constraint of precise short baseline.The result shows that the centimeter accuracy could be achieved. When comparing the results of kinematic baseline solutions, performance of BDS is worse than GPS on North and Up components, but oppositely on the component of East in the kinematic baseline processing.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Lei Chen ◽  
Ke Zhang ◽  
Xiangwei Zhu ◽  
Yangbo Huang ◽  
Gang Ou ◽  
...  

GNSS’s orbit determinations always rely on ground station or intersatellite links (ISL). In the emergency of satellite-to-ground links and ISL break-off, BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) satellites cannot determine their orbits. In this paper, we propose to add a spaceborne annular beam antenna for receiving the global positioning system (GPS) and global navigation satellite system (GLONASS) signals; therefore, the BDS satellites may be capable of determining their orbits by GPS/GLONASS signals. Firstly, the spectrum selection, the power isolation, the range of Doppler frequency shift, and changing rate are taken into account for the feasibility. Specifically, the L2 band signals are chosen for receiving and processing in order to prevent the overlapping of the receiving and transmitting signals. Secondly, the minimum number of visible satellites (MNVS), carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N0), dilution of precision (GDOP), and geometric distance root-mean-square (gdrms) are evaluated for acquiring the effective receiving antennas’ coverage ranges. Finally, the scheme of deploying 3 receiving antennas is proved to be optimal by analysis and simulations over the middle earth orbit (MEO), geostationary earth orbit (GEO), and the inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit (IGSO). The antennas’ structures and patterns are designed to draw a conclusion that installing GPS and GLONASS receivers on BDS satellites for emergent orbits determination is cost-effective.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 2767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenhao Ouyang ◽  
Junbo Shi ◽  
Yuru Shen ◽  
Lihong Li

The second-generation of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-2) has been officially providing positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services within the Asia–Pacific region for six years, starting from 2013. A comprehensive analysis of BDS-2 satellite broadcast navigation message performance during the past six years is highly demanded, not only for the regional service but also for the global service announced in December 2018. Therefore, this study focuses on the performance assessment of six-year BDS-2 broadcast navigation messages from 2013 to 2018 in three aspects: Message availability, anomaly detection, and signal-in-space user range errors (SIS UREs). Firstly, our results, based on International GNSS service (IGS) Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) navigation files, indicate that the BDS-2 Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) and Inclined Geosynchronous Satellite Orbit (IGSO) satellites have >98.51% broadcast navigation message availability, and the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites has a ~90.03% availability. Secondly, the comparison between broadcast navigation messages and IGS precise products reveals that the User Range Accuracy Index (URAI) contained in the broadcast message could not reflect satellite performance correctly. Another satellite status indicator, space vehicle (SV) health, can only partially detect a satellite anomaly. The anomaly detection result using IGS precise products for reference shows 20241 anomalies out of 651038 broadcast navigation messages within six years. Finally, compared with the IGSO and MEO satellites, the orbit qualities of GEO satellites are significantly worse due to their large along-track orbit error. The clock performance of all satellites are at the comparable level. The satellite orbit type (GEO/IGSO/MEO) does not impact the orbit-only URE, global-average URE, and worst-case URE.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 3967
Author(s):  
Fei Shen ◽  
Mingming Sui ◽  
Yifan Zhu ◽  
Xinyun Cao ◽  
Yulong Ge ◽  
...  

Soil moisture is an important geophysical parameter for studying terrestrial water and energy cycles. It has been proven that Global Navigation Satellite System Interferometry Reflectometry (GNSS-IR) can be applied to monitor soil moisture. Unlike the Global Positioning System (GPS) that has only medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) also has geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) satellites and inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit (IGSO) satellites. Benefiting from the distribution of three different orbits, the BDS has better coverage in Asia than other satellite systems. Previous retrieval methods that have been confirmed on GPS cannot be directly applied to BDS MEO satellites due to different satellite orbits. The contribution of this study is a proposed multi-satellite soil moisture retrieval method for BDS MEO and IGSO satellites based on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) observations. The method weakened the influence of environmental differences in different directions by considering satellite repeat period. A 30-day observation experiment was conducted in Fengqiu County, China and was used for verification. The satellite data collected were divided according to the satellite repeat period, and ensured the response data moved in the same direction. The experimental results showed that the BDS IGSO and MEO soil moisture estimation results had good correlations with the in situ soil moisture fluctuations. The BDS MEO B1I estimation results had the best performance; the estimation accuracy in terms of correlation coefficient was 0.9824, root mean square error (RMSE) was 0.0056 cm3cm−3, and mean absolute error (MAE) was 0.0040 cm3cm−3. The estimations of the BDS MEO B1I, MEO B2I, and IGSO B2I performed better than the GPS L1 and L2 estimations. For the BDS IGSO satellites, the B1I signal was more suitable for soil moisture retrieval than the B2I signal; the correlation coefficient was increased by 19.84%, RMSE was decreased by 42.64%, and MAE was decreased by 43.93%. In addition, the BDS MEO satellites could effectively capture sudden rainfall events.


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