Comparisons of CODE and CNES/CLS GPS satellite bias products and applications in Sentinel-3 satellite precise orbit determination

To resolve undifferenced GNSS phase ambiguities, dedicated satellite products are needed, such as satellite orbits, clock offsets and biases. The International GNSS Service CNES/CLS analysis center provides satellite (HMW) Hatch-Melbourne-Wübbena bias and dedicated satellite clock products (including satellite phase bias), while the CODE analysis center provides satellite OSB (observable-specific-bias) and integer clock products. The CNES/CLS GPS satellite HMW bias products are determined by the Hatch-Melbourne-Wübbena (HMW) linear combination and aggregate both code (C1W, C2W) and phase (L1W, L2W) biases. By forming the HMW linear combination of CODE OSB corrections on the same signals, we compare CODE satellite HMW biases to those from CNES/CLS. The fractional part of GPS satellite HMW biases from both analysis centers are very close to each other, with a mean Root-Mean-Square (RMS) of differences of 0.01 wide-lane cycles. A direct comparison of satellite narrow-lane biases is not easily possible since satellite narrow-lane biases are correlated with satellite orbit and clock products, as well as with integer wide-lane ambiguities. Moreover, CNES/CLS provides no satellite narrow-lane biases but incorporates them into satellite clock offsets. Therefore, we compute differences of GPS satellite orbits, clock offsets, integer wide-lane ambiguities and narrow-lane biases (only for CODE products) between CODE and CNES/CLS products. The total difference of these terms for each satellite represents the difference of the narrow-lane bias by subtracting certain integer narrow-lane cycles. We call this total difference “narrow-lane” bias difference. We find that 3% of the narrow-lane biases from these two analysis centers during the experimental time period have differences larger than 0.05 narrow-lane cycles. In fact, this is mainly caused by one Block IIA satellite since satellite clock offsets of the IIA satellite cannot be well determined during eclipsing seasons. To show the application of both types of GPS products, we apply them for Sentinel-3 satellite orbit determination. The wide-lane fixing rates using both products are more than 98%, while the narrow-lane fixing rates are more than 95%. Ambiguity-fixed Sentinel-3 satellite orbits show clear improvement over float solutions. RMS of 6-h orbit overlaps improves by about a factor of two. Also, we observe similar improvements by comparing our Sentinel-3 orbit solutions to the external combined products. Standard deviation value of Satellite Laser Ranging residuals is reduced by more than 10% for Sentinel-3A and more than 15% for Sentinel-3B satellite by fixing ambiguities to integer values.Technische Universität München (1025