Evaluation of Inter-System Bias between BDS-2 and BDS-3 Satellites and Its Impact on Precise Point Positioning

Abstract

The BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) currently has 41 satellites in orbits and will reach its full constellation following the launch of the last BDS satellite in June 2020 to provide navigation, positioning, and timing (PNT) services for global users. In this contribution, we investigate the characteristics of inter-system bias (ISB) between BDS-2 and BDS-3 and verify whether an additional ISB parameter should be introduced for the BDS-2 and BDS-3 precise point positioning (PPP). The results reveal that because of different clock references applied for BDS-2 and BDS-3 in the International GNSS Service (IGS) precise satellites clock products and the inconsistent code hardware delays of BDS-2 and BDS-3 for some receiver types, an ISB parameter needs to be introduced for BDS-2 and BDS-3 PPP. Further, the results show that the ISB can be regarded as a constant within a day, the value of which is closely related to the receiver type. The ISB values of the stations with the same receiver type are similar to each other, but a great difference may be presented for different receiver types, up to several meters. In addition, the impact of ISB on PPP has also been studied, which demonstrates that the performance of kinematic PPP could be improved when ISB is introduced.