Impact of ambiguity resolution with sequential constraints on real-time precise GPS satellite orbit determination

The real-time precise orbit is an essential prerequisite for a real-time precise point positioning service. Focusing on the impact of ambiguity resolution on real-time orbital precision, we propose an efficient approach for real-time ambiguity resolution, which consists of two modules. The first module resolves the double-differenced ambiguities according to their proximity to the nearest integer. The second module sequentially adds the resolved integer ambiguity constraints to the square-root information filter process, after confirming that the same constraints have not been imposed before the current epoch. To validate our method, GPS data collected from 100 globally distributed stations are used to simulate a real-time precise orbit determination. The convergence performance is analyzed, and the accuracy of the orbit is evaluated. The results show that: (1) Almost 90% of the double-differenced ambiguities are fixed correctly in real time for baselines shorter than 1000 km. (2) After application of the proposed approach, the root-mean-square errors of all the satellite orbits are reduced from (5.9, 3.4, 2.3) cm to (4.7, 2.6, 2.2) cm for the along-track, cross-track and radial directions, respectively, with improvements of about 22% for the along-track and cross-track directions, and 6% for the radial direction. (3) Simulated real-time orbits determined with this method can obtain almost the same accuracy as some ultra-rapid products and, particularly, better accuracy can be achieved for eclipsing satellites.