Evaluation of the Multipath Environment Using Electromagnetic-Absorbing Materials at Continuous GNSS Stations

Abstract

To date, no universal modelling technique is available to mitigate the effect of site-specific multipaths in high-precision global navigation satellite system (GNSS) data processing. Multipaths affect both carrier-phase and code/pseudorange measurements, and the errors can propagate and cause position biases. This paper presents the use of an Eccosorb AN-W-79 microwave-absorbing material mounted around a GNSS antenna that reflects less than −17 dB of normal incident energy above a frequency of 600 MHz. To verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the Eccosorb, we installed two close stations by continuously operating multi-GNSS (BeiDou, GLONASS, Galileo and GPS) in a challenging location. One station is equipped with the Eccosorb AN-W-79, covering a square area of 3.35 m2 around the antenna, and the second station operates without it. The standard deviation reductions from single point positioning estimates are significant for all the individual GNSS solutions for the station equipped with microwave-absorbing material. The reductions are as follows: for GPS, between 15% and 23%; for Galileo, between 22% and 45%; for GLONASS, 22%; and for BeiDou, 4%. Furthermore, we assess the influence of multipaths by analysing the linear combinations of code and carrier phase measurements for various GNSS frequencies. The Galileo code multipath shows a reduction of more than 60% for the station with microwave-absorbing material. For GLONASS, particularly for the GLOM3X and GLOM1P code multipath combinations, the reduction reaches 50%, depending on the observation code types. For BeiDou, the reduction is more than 30%, and for GPS, it reaches between 20% and 40%. The Eccosorb AN-W-79 microwave-absorbing material shows convincing results in reducing the code multipath noise level. Again, using microwave-absorbing material leads to an improvement between 15% and 60% in carrier phase cycle slips. The carrier-phase multipath contents on the post-fit residuals from the processed GNSS solutions show a relative RMS reduction of 13% for Galileo and 9% for GLONASS and GPS when using the microwave-absorbing material. This study also presents power spectral contents from residual signal-to-noise ratio time series using Morlet wavelet transformation. The power spectra from the antenna with the Eccosorb AN-W-79 have the smallest magnitude, demonstrating the capacity of microwave-absorbing materials to lessen the multipath influence while not eliminating it.