Toward a GNSS network solution in space based on double-differences between LEO satellites

Abstract

As low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are increasingly equipped with highly precise Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers, new opportunities for GNSS-based precise orbit determination (POD) arise. The availability of GNSS observations from satellites that are geometrically well distributed over the entire Earth may enable the formation of an independent GNSS network in LEO, which can be processed solely on the basis of double-difference (DD) observations. This study presents a first attempt to compute a network solution of GNSS DD observations in space that combines data from eight satellites, including GRACE-FO C/D, Sentinel-3A/B, Sentinel-6A and Swarm A/B/C. Using satellite laser ranging (SLR) validation, we show that the absolute position accuracy of an ambiguity-float network solution increases from about 4 cm 1D RMS in a constellation of three satellites to about 2 cm–2.5 cm in a constellation of eight satellites. Similar results are obtained by comparing the baseline lengths from our DD network solution with those derived from external ambiguity-fixed zero-difference (ZD) orbits, with differences at a level of 2 cm to 3 cm RMS for a network of eight satellites. For both the SLR residuals and the baseline consistency, an improvement of up to 0.5 cm can be achieved when resolving 60 % to 70 % of the carrier-phase ambiguities of highly dynamic baselines to integer values. Overall, the geometric distribution of the satellites and high dynamics of the constellation prove to be beneficial for computing a DD network solution in space. This is particularly promising in the view of large LEO constellations currently being developed, with a much higher number of spacecraft and a uniform global coverage, where the advantages of the network approach presented in this study will become even more significant.