GNSS-Warp Software for Real-Time Precise Point Positioning

Abstract

On April 1, 2013 IGS launched the real-time service providing products for Precise Point Positioning (PPP). The availability of real-time makes PPP a very powerful technique to process GNSS signals in real-time and opens a new PPP applications opportunities. There are still, however, some limitations of PPP, especially in the kinematic mode. A significant change in satellite geometry is required to efficiently de-correlate troposphere delay, receiver clock offset, and receiver height. In order to challenge PPP limitations, the GNSS-WARP (Wroclaw Algorithms for Real-time Positioning) software has been developed from scratch at Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Science in Poland. This paper presents the GNSS-WARP software itself and some results of GNSS data analysis using PPP and PPP-RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) technique. The results of static and kinematic processing in GPS only and GPS + GLONASS mode with final and real-time products are presented. Software performance validation in postprocessing mode confirmed that the software can be considered as a state-ofthe- art software and used for further studies on PPP algorithm development. The real-time positioning test made it possible to assess the quality of real-time coordinates, which is a few millimeters for North, East, Up in static mode, a below decimeter in kinematic mode. The accuracy and precision of height estimates in kinematic mode were improved by constraining the solution with an external, near real-time troposphere model. The software also allows estimation of real-time ZTD, however, the obtained precision of 11.2 mm means that further improvements in the software, real-time products or processing strategy are required.