GPS DATA
PROCESSING
Chapter 6
Solving Initial Integer
Ambiguity
In carrier phase measurements, the signal is pure
sinusoidal wave, which means that all cycles look
the same. Therefore the receiver has no means
to identify one cycle from another
When the receiver is switched on, it cannot count
the total number of cycles between the satellite
and the receiver. It can only measure the
fractional part of the cycle and the number of
complete cycles will remain ambiguous or
unknown and which is known as integer
ambiguity.
The integer ambiguity will be the same
throughout the survey and can be
represented by a single bias term (N).
The integer ambiguity will change only if
the receiver loses lock on the satellite.
Preprocessing
Transfer of data to storage medium.
RINEX (Receiver independent exchange format)
format cab be used.
Satellite positions determination from orbital data at
selected epoch.
Approximate point coordinate determination by
single point positioning from the code data.
Phase difference observables formation from the raw
phase data.
Cycle slip detection and repair.
Determination of base line vectors from the double
difference observables.
Main Processing
Assumed that all the data is clean, and free of cycle
slips.
Phase data processing in single baseline mode. The
main steps of a baseline solution using phase data
are:
Preparation: apriori coordinates, ephemeris file to be used,
baseline to be processed (if more than one observed in a
session), data file names, antenna height and offsets, etc.
Selection of parameters: this is dependent on the baseline
to be processed, the ambiguity model used in the software,
differencing scheme adopted, etc.
Selection of options: apriori standard deviation of
parameters and observations, criteria for data rejection, data
reduction methods, whether correlations are to be considered,
elevation cutoff, satellites to be excluded from solution,
differencing strategy to be used, etc.
Processing the data and get solution. In such case
there are three types of phase solutions
Triple difference Solution.
Double difference Solution (Ambiguity-free)
Double Difference Solution (Ambiguity-fixed).In the process
converting ambiguous phase data to range data.
There are two types of double-difference phase
data solutions:
Ambiguity-free solution (Ambiguity- float solution)
Ambiguity-fixed solution - in which some or all the
ambiguity parameters have been, resolved to their
integer values. Such a solution is very strong as it
only contains the station coordinate parameters
Output found from main processing
includes the following
Coordinate parameters as Cartesian (x,
y, z) or geodetic (ϕ, λ, h) values in the
WGS84 datum, baseline components, for
ground mark and antenna centers.
Estimated standard deviation and
correlation matrix or variance
covariance matrix of parameters
