LEO real-time ambiguity-fixed precise orbit determination with onboard GPS/Galileo observations

Real-time precise orbits of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites are becoming indispensable with the rapid development of real-time Earth observation application and LEO enhanced precise point positioning. Currently, GNSS-based precise orbit determination is a widely used method for LEO onboard navigation. However, the real-time LEO satellite orbits are usually obtained by ambiguity-float solution even when the GNSS augmentation corrections are considered. In this study, we perform LEO ambiguity-fixed multi-GNSS real-time precise orbit determination (RTPOD) based on square root information filter. One month of onboard GPS + Galileo observations from Sentinel-6A and real-time products of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) are used to investigate the contribution of integer ambiguity resolution (IAR). The benefit of dual-system combination on LEO RTPOD is firstly evaluated. The combination of GPS and Galileo dual-system contributes to more visible GNSS satellites and better observation geometry for LEO RTPOD, which results in an evident accuracy improvement of 19% over GPS and a convergence time reduction of 43% and 41% compared to the GPS and Galileo solutions respectively. Considering the short arc of onboard GNSS observations and imperfections in GNSS real-time products, we propose a strict IAR quality control method to avoid fixing the ambiguity to the wrong values. The results indicate that the IAR quality control method we used can effectively reduce the wrong fixing risk and increase the robustness of the IAR solution. Using onboard GPS and Galileo observations, the 3D orbit accuracy of the ambiguity-fixed solution is significantly improved from 5.17 to 3.61cm, by 30%, compared to the ambiguity-float solution. Furthermore, the application of IAR also achieves a faster convergence to the centimeter-level orbit.