A new ionosphere-free ambiguity resolution method for long-range baseline with GNSS triple-frequency signals

New GNSS systems (i.e. GPS modernization, BeiDou, and Galileo) will provide multiple navigation signals for reliable navigation services. The triple or even multiple frequency signals are expected to bring great benefits to the ambiguity resolution (AR) over long-range baselines, which is always regarded as a huge challenge. Another issue in the long baseline AR is the unmodeled ionospheric delay, which is one of the major errors in ranging signals. A new triple-frequency, ionosphere-free technique for ambiguity resolution of long-range baseline is developed in this study. In this technique, the optimal observation combinations are chosen considering the effect of ionospheric delay. At the same time, using this technique, the double difference (DD) ionospheric delay is nullified in the ambiguity search process. The performance of the new technique is examined using the simulated GPS triple frequency data as well as the real BDS observation. Results show that the ambiguity can be fixed within 10 min for GPS and BDS long-range baselines with this new technique.