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Impact of elevation mask on multi-GNSS precise point positioning performance

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Abstract

Precise point positioning (PPP) is famous for its capability of high-precision positioning and its wide application in many fields. With the rapid development of BDS and Galileo, the number of GNSS satellites used for positioning has now exceeded 110. It brings both opportunities and challenges to PPP. Based on the data of 90 tracking stations of MGEX, this paper analyzed the impact of elevation masks on the performance of multi-GNSS kinematic PPP. The results show that the PODP increases as the elevation mask increases. In general, it will reduce the positioning accuracy and the convergence speed with the increasing of the elevation mask for the PPP float solution. Furthermore, when the elevation mask is below 25o, increasing the elevation mask has little effect on the position accuracy of the horizontal and vertical components in the first 10 min. But after 15 min, the effect on the vertical component became apparently. And after convergence, the RMS of multi-GNSS PPP float solution can reach 5 cm and 10 cm for the horizontal and vertical components when the elevation mask is below 25o. When the elevation mask is 30o, the RMS is still less than 6 cm for the horizontal component, while about 99% of the RMS is less than 11.5 cm for the vertical component. Thirdly, for multi-GNSS PPP AR, it can improve the TTFF and the fixing percentage by fixing the ambiguity subnet with higher elevation mask firstly. Moreover, when the elevation mask is below to 20o, the improvement is more obvious and when the elevation mask is larger than 25o, the TTFF may become longer in some cases.

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Acknowledgments

The IGS is acknowledged for providing high-quality precise orbit and clock corrections as well as tracking data. The **amen **ang’an airport investment and Construction Co., Ltd. is acknowledged for providing tracking data.The **amen Key Laboratory of transportation infrastructure health and safety is acknowledged for providing project equipments.This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.41704033, Grant No.41704026), the **amen science and technology Program (Grant No.3502Z20193062) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No.BK20191180).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, **amen University of Technology, **amen, 36102, China

    Yi bin Wu & Yanyan Liu

  2. Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Spatial Smart Sensing and Services, College of Civil Engineering, Shenzhen University, 3688 nanhai road, Shenzhen, 518060, Guangdong, China

    Yanyan Liu & Wenting Yi

  3. **amen **ang’an airport investment and Construction Co., Ltd, **amen, 36102, China

    Hong bin Ge

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  1. Yi bin Wu
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Correspondence to Yanyan Liu.

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Wu, Y.b., Liu, Y., Yi, W. et al. Impact of elevation mask on multi-GNSS precise point positioning performance. Earth Sci Inform 14, 1111–1120 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-021-00619-0

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