GLONASS-based precise point positioning and performance analysis

Current precise point positioning (PPP) techniques are mainly based on GPS which has been extensively investigated. With the increase of available GLONASS satellites during its revitalization, GLONASS observations were increasingly integrated into GPS-based PPP. Now that GLONASS has reached its full constellation, there will be a wide interest in PPP systems based on only GLONASS since it provides a PPP implementation independent of GPS. An investigation of GLONASS-based PPP will also help the development of GPS and GLONASS combined PPP techniques for improved precision and reliability. This paper presents an observation model for GLONASS-based PPP in which the GLONASS hardware delay biases are addressed. In view of frequently changed frequency channel number (FCN) for GLONASS satellites, an algorithm has been developed to compute the FCN for GLONASS satellites using code and phase observations, which avoids the need to provide the GLONASS frequency channel information during data processing. The observation residuals from GLONASS-based PPP are analyzed and compared to those from GPS-based PPP. The performance of GLONASS-based PPP is assessed using data from 15 globally distributed stations.