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The code observable of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) is influenced by group delay variations (GDV) of transmitter and receiver antennas. For the Global Positioning System (GPS), the variations can sum up to 1 m in the ionosphere-free linear combination and thus can significantly affect precise code applications. The contribution of the GPS transmitters can amount to 0.8 m peak-to-peak over the entire nadir angle range. To verify the assumption of their time-invariance, we determined daily individual satellite GDV for GPS transmitter antennas over a period of more than two years. Dual-frequency observations of globally distributed reference stations and their multipath combination form the basis for our analysis. The resulting GPS GDV are stable on the level of a few centimeters for C1, P2, and for the ionosphere-free linear combination. Our study reveals that the inconsistencies of the GDV of space vehicle number (SVN) 55 with respect to earlier studies are not caused by temporal instabilities, but are rather related to receiver properties.

Different from GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO and BeiDou-3, it is confirmed that the code multipath bias (CMB), which originate from the satellite end and can be over 1 m, are commonly found in the code observations of BeiDou-2 (BDS) IGSO and MEO satellites. In order to mitigate their adverse effects on absolute precise applications which use the code measurements, we propose in this paper an improved correction model to estimate the CMB. Different from the traditional model which considering the correction values are orbit-type dependent (estimating two sets of values for IGSO and MEO, respectively) and modeling the CMB as a piecewise linear function with a elevation node separation of 10°, we estimate the corrections for each BDS IGSO + MEO satellite on one hand, and a denser elevation node separation of 5° is used to model the CMB variations on the other hand. Currently, the institutions such as IGS-MGEX operate over 120 stations which providing the daily BDS observations. These large amounts of data provide adequate support to refine the CMB estimation satellite by satellite in our improved model. One month BDS observations from MGEX are used for assessing the performance of the improved CMB model by means of precise point positioning (PPP). Experimental results show that for the satellites on the same orbit type, obvious differences can be found in the CMB at the same node and frequency. Results show that the new correction model can improve the wide-lane (WL) ambiguity usage rate for WL fractional cycle bias estimation, shorten the WL and narrow-lane (NL) time to first fix (TTFF) in PPP ambiguity resolution (AR) as well as improve the PPP positioning accuracy. With our improved correction model, the usage of WL ambiguity is increased from 94.1% to 96.0%, the WL and NL TTFF of PPP AR is shorten from 10.6 to 9.3 min, 67.9 to 63.3 min, respectively, compared with the traditional correction model. In addition, both the traditional and improved CMB model have a better performance in these aspects compared with the model which does not account for the CMB correction.

Since 2015, China has successfully launched five experimental BeiDou global navigation system (BDS-3) satellites for expanding the regional system to global coverage. An initial performance assessment and characterization analysis of the BDS-3 is presented. Twenty days of tracking data have been collected from eleven monitoring stations. The tracking characteristics and measurement quality are analyzed and compared with the regional BDS (BDS-2) in terms of observed carrier-to-noise density ratio, pseudo-range multipath, and noise. The preliminary results suggest that the measurement quality of BDS-3 outperforms the BDS-2 for the same type of satellites. In addition, the analysis of multipath combinations reveals that the problem of satellite-induced code biases found in BDS-2 seems to have been solved for BDS-3. Precise orbit and clock determination are carried out and evaluated. The orbit overlap comparison show a precision of 2–6 dm in 3D root mean square (RMS) and 6–14 cm in the radial component for experimental BDS-3 satellites. External validations with satellite laser ranging (SLR) show residual RMS on the level of 1–3 dm. Finally, the performance of the new-generation onboard atomic clocks is evaluated and results confirm an increased stability compared to BDS-2 satellite clocks.