Initial analysis for characterizing and mitigating the pseudorange biases of BeiDou navigation satellite system

Abstract

Pseudorange bias has become a practical obstacle in the field of high-precision global navigation satellite system (GNSS) applications, which greatly restricts the further development of high-precision applications. Unfortunately, no studies have been conducted on the pseudorange biases of the BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS). To mitigate the effects of pseudorange biases on the BDS performance to the greatest extent possible, the origin of such BDS pseudorange biases are first thoroughly illustrated, based upon which the dependency of the biases on the receiver configurations are studied in detail. Owing to the limitations regarding the parameter re-settings for hardware receivers, software receiver technology was used to achieve the ergodicity of the receiver parameters, such as the correlator spacing and front-end bandwidth, using high-fidelity signal observations collected by a 40-m-high gain dish antenna at Haoping Observatory. Based on this, the pseudorange biases of the BDS B1I and B3I signals and their dependency on different correlator spacings and front-end bandwidths were adequately provided. Finally, herein, the suggested settings of the correlator spacing and front-end bandwidth for BDS receivers are in detail proposed for the first time. As a result, the pseudorange biases of the BDS signals will be less than 20 cm, reaching even under 10 cm, under this condition. This study will provide special attention to GNSS pseudorange biases, and will significantly promote a clear definition of the appropriate receiver parameter settings in the interface control documents of BDS and other individual satellite systems.