J Geod (2016) 90:209–228
DOI 10.1007/s00190-015-0867-4
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS
observations
Ningbo Wang1,4 · Yunbin Yuan1 · Zishen Li2 · Oliver Montenbruck3 ·
Bingfeng Tan1,4
Received: 26 May 2015 / Accepted: 19 October 2015 / Published online: 11 November 2015
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Abstract In order to better understand the differential code
biases (DCBs) of global navigation satellite system, the
IGGDCB method is extended to estimate the intra- and inter-
frequency biases of the global positioning system (GPS),
GLONASS, BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS), and
Galileo based on observations collected by the multi-GNSS
experiment (MGEX) of the international GNSS service
(IGS). In the approach of IGGDCB, the local ionospheric
total electronic content is modeled with generalized tri-
angular series (GTS) function rather than using a global
ionosphere model or a priori ionospheric information. The
DCB estimated by the IGGDCB method is compared with
the DCB products from the Center for Orbit Determination
in Europe (CODE) and German Aerospace Center (DLR), as
well as the broadcast timing group delay (TGD) parameters
over a 2-year span (2013 and 2014). The results indicate that
B Ningbo Wang
wnbigg@asch.whigg.ac.cn
B Yunbin Yuan
yybgps@whigg.ac.cn
Zishen Li
lizishen@aoe.ac.cn
Oliver Montenbruck
Oliver.Montenbruck@dlr.de
Bingfeng Tan
bingfengtan@asch.whigg.ac.cn
1 State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth’s Dynamics,
Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Wuhan, China
2 Academy of Opto-Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China
3 German Space Operations Center, Deutsches Zentrum für
Luft- und Raumfahrt, 82230 Weßling, Germany
4 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
GPS and GLONASS intra-frequency biases obtained in this
work show the same precision levels as those estimated by
DLR (about 0.1 and 0.2–0.4 ns for the two constellations,
respectively, with respect to the products of CODE). The
precision levels of IGGDCB-based inter-frequency biases
estimated over the 24-month period are about 0.29 ns for
GPS, 0.56 ns for GLONASS, 0.36 ns for BDS, and 0.24
ns for Galileo, respectively. Here, the accuracies of GPS
and GLONASS biases are assessed relative to the products
of CODE, while those of BDS and Galileo are compared
with the estimates of DLR. In addition, the monthly stabil-
ity indices of IGGDCB-based DCBs are 0.11 (GPS), 0.18
(GLONASS), 0.17 (BDS), and 0.14 (Galileo) ns for the indi-
vidual constellation.
Keywords Multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) · Differ-
ential code bias (DCB) · Timing group delay (TGD) ·
Intra-frequency bias · Inter-frequency bias · IGGDCB · Total
electronic content (TEC)
1 Background and motivation
Pseudorange observations of global navigation satellite sys-
tem (GNSS) are well known to be affected by the differential
code biases (DCBs), which need to be precisely calibrated
for pseudorange-based positioning, timing, and ionospheric
modeling (Sardón and Zarraoa 1997; Hernández-Pajares
et al. 2011; Zhang et al. 2012; Montenbruck and Hauschild
2013). Generally, DCBs can be classified into two cate-
gories: intra-frequency bias and inter-frequency bias. The
first one is the bias between two code observations at the same
frequency, and the second one is the bias between code obser-
vations at two different frequencies (Leandro et al. 2007).
The satellite DCB-related timing group delay (TGD), broad-
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cast group delay (BGD), and inter-signal correction (ISC)
are also the essential parameters in navigation messages of
global positioning system (GPS), BeiDou navigation satel-
lite system (BDS), and Galileo to compensate the differential
hardware delay for real-time positioning applications (OS-
SIS-ICD 2010; CSNO 2013; IS-GPS-200 2012).
For intra-frequency bias, only sparse analyses of GPS
P1-C1 and P2-C2 biases are currently available. The satel-
lite clock offsets in both broadcast and precise ephemeris
products are commonly computed by ionosphere-free com-
bination of phase (L1/L2) and code (P1/P2) observations.
GPS-related applications using C1/P2 or P1/C2 observa-
tions differing from the conventional reference signals should
correct the biases between P1-C1 and P2-C2 observations
(Montenbruck and Hauschild 2013). GPS P1-C1 products,
obtained as part of satellite clock estimation procedure, have
been provided by the Center for Orbit Determination in
Europe (CODE) since 2000. It has been demonstrated that
the day-to-day repeatability of daily CODE P1-C1 solutions
is in the order of 0.05 ns (Schaer 2000). The P1-C1 products
of CODE are now widely used by the international GNSS
service (IGS) analysis centers and users of IGS clock prod-
ucts. The intra-frequency bias can also be directly calculated
from GNSS raw observations, allowing CODE to provide P1-
C1 and P2-C2 satellite and receiver bias corrections for GPS
and GLONASS measurements (Schaer 2012a). Gao (2001)
investigated the constant and non-constant components in the
biases between GPS P1 and C1 observations. More recently,
P1-C1 and P2-C2 code bias estimates based on precise point
positioning (PPP) have been analyzed in the studies of Lean-
dro et al. (2007) and Li (2015a). The first study achieves
an agreement of 0.15 ns between the estimated satellite P1-
C1 biases and monthly CODE solutions, during Jan. 1 to
Jan. 10, 2007. The second study reports that the difference
between P1-C1 estimates and CODE products is smaller than
0.4 ns during a period of 30 days, from mid-July to mid-
August 2012. Therefore, the intra-frequency bias estimation
methods can be summarized as follows: (1) estimating the
intra-frequency biases in satellite clock analysis procedure;
(2) directly extracting the biases from two different code
observations simultaneously observed at the same frequency;
and (3) determining the biases based on PPP technique.
TGD and DCB parameters are commonly used to describe
and compensate satellite/receiver inter-frequency biases.
GPS broadcast TGDs are initially defined to account for
the effect of space vehicle (SV) group delay differential
between the onboard L1P and L2P signals (Wilson et al.
1999). In addition to TGD parameter, four ISC parameters
are introduced in the new civil navigation (CNAV) message
to provide DCB corrections for L1C/A, L2C, and L5 signals
w.r.t. L1P(Y) signal (Steigenberger et al. 2015). Although
each individual satellite TGD had been calibrated before
launch, a discrepancy between the monitored and broad-
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N. Wang et al.
cast TGD values remained in the in-orbit satellites (Sardón
and Zarraoa 1997). Since 1998, more accurate DCB esti-
mates have been routinely provided by the IGS for the
post-processing applications of GPS and GLONASS (Fel-
tens 2003a, b; Dow 2009). It is currently common practice
for network-based DCB determination to estimate one DCB
per station, which is considered identical for all satellites,
and one DCB per satellite, which is considered the same
for all receivers (Hauschild and Montenbruck 2014). The
methods for determining satellite DCB based on data from
ground monitoring stations can be mainly separated into two
categories (Li et al. 2014): (1) DCB is determined simultane-
ously with global or local ionospheric total electronic content
(TEC) modeling, and (2) DCB is estimated from code dif-
ferences after accounting for the ionospheric path delays.
With regard to the first approach, satellite and receiver
DCBs are included as additional unknowns in mathemati-
cal models (e.g., polynomials and spherical harmonics) for
ionospheric TEC determination (Schaer 1999; Arikan et al.
2008; Krankowski et al. 2009; Hernández-Pajares et al.
2011). GPS and GLONASS DCBs routinely estimated by
individual Ionospheric Associate Analysis Center (IAAC,
including CODE, JPL, UPC, and ESA) of the IGS are
currently considered as the most reliable DCB products
(Hernández-Pajares et al. 2009; Dach et al. 2009; Li et al.
2015b). The DCB estimates from different IAACs are pro-
duced as part of the global ionosphere maps (GIM). Li et al.
(2012) proposed a new approach for GNSS satellite DCB
determination, which was developed at the Institute of Geo-
desy and Geophysics (IGG) in Wuhan and is designated
as IGGDCB. In contrast to global ionospheric modeling,
the ionospheric vertical TEC of each individual station in
IGGDCB is independently modeled by generalized triangu-
lar series (GTS) function. Based on a few tracking stations,
it is demonstrated that the accuracy of IGGDCB-based GPS
DCB estimates performs at the level of 0.13 and 0.10 ns for
the years 2002 and 2009, respectively (Li et al. 2012).
Concerning the second approach, a priori information of
ionosphere (e.g., global or regional ionospheric TEC maps,
experiential ionospheric model, etc.) is generally needed to
correct the ionospheric TEC along the signal propagation
path from GNSS satellite to the receiver. The accuracy of
DCB estimates depends on the degree to which the variation
of ionospheric TEC can be captured by empirical ionospheric
models. The more precise is the priori ionospheric infor-
mation, the more accurate and reliable are the resulting
DCB estimates. GIMs are commonly employed to mitigate
ionospheric path delays in the studies for DCB determination
(Keshin 2011; Montenbruck et al. 2014).
With the emerging BDS and Galileo, as well as the
modernization of GPS and GLONASS, multi-GNSS DCB
estimation has become one of the challenging issues for
the IGS community (Willis et al. 1999; Dach et al. 2009;
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations
Dow 2009). The IGS Bias and Calibration Working Group
(BCWG) was established for GNSS bias retrieval and moni-
toring (Schaer 2012b). However, only limited information is
presently available for satellite and receiver DCBs related to
the modernized GPS, BDS, as well as Galileo signals, par-
ticularly for the diverse observation types supported by the
Receiver Independent Exchange Format Version 3 (RINEX
3, IGS 2013). The IGS multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX)
multi-constellation and multi-frequency observations offer a
basis for an independent determination of ionosphere and
DCB parameters (Montenbruck et al. 2013; Rizos et al.
2013). Currently, satellite and receiver DCB estimates for
all the available GNSS constellations are determined by the
German Aerospace Center (DLR) based on MGEX observa-
tions and GIMs. A day-to-day repeatability of 0.05–0.3 ns
of the estimated satellite bias is reported (Montenbruck et al.
2014), and the accuracy of BDS satellite DCB estimates of
DLR has also been assessed in the study of Guo (2015).
In the present study, the IGGDCB method is extended to
estimate the intra- and inter-frequency biases of currently
available GNSSs, including GPS and GLONASS, as well
as BDS and Galileo based on MGEX observations. A soft-
ware package has been developed for daily DCB estimation
in an automatic mode, and a comprehensive assessment and
a comparison of the MGEX-based DCB estimates are pre-
sented. This article is organized as follows: Sect. 2 presents
an overview of the MGEX tracking network and an introduc-
tion to multi-GNSS biases. Section 3 describes the IGGDCB
algorithms, including intra-frequency bias estimation and
extraction of ionospheric observable from GNSS data, as well
as the modeling of local ionospheric TEC and determination
of satellite- and receiver-specific DCBs. Section 4 performs
an assessment of the accuracy and stability of GNSS satel-
lite DCB estimates based on IGGDCB. Section 5, finally,
presents conclusions and future work.
Fig. 1 MGEX station distribution and receiver type (as of Dec. 2014)
211
2 Introduction to multi-GNSS biases
With the development of the modernized GPS and the emerg-
ing BDS and Galileo, the IGS has initiated the MGEX project,
to familiarize IGS participants and users with the new satel-
lite navigation systems (Montenbruck et al. 2013; Rizos et al.
2013). The MGEX network comprises almost 120 stations
by the end of 2014 (see Fig. 1), and each station is able
to support at least one of the new navigation systems (e.g.,
BDS, Galileo, and QZSS) in addition to the legacy GPS
and GLONASS systems. The current set of MGEX stations
shows an almost global coverage. A summary of the con-
tributed receivers and the corresponding observations within
MGEX is provided in Table 1. Observation types for GPS,
GLONASS (GLO), as well as BDS and Galileo (GAL) are
based on the RINEX 3 format (IGS 2013). It can be found that
five basic receiver types (i.e., Trimble, Javad, Leica, Septen-
trio, and NovAtel) are currently employed within the MGEX
network. GPS and GLONASS are supported by virtually all
receivers, and Galileo satellites are also monitored by the
majority of MGEX sites. BDS B1, B2, and optionally, B3
signals can be tracked by three types of receivers, including
Trimble NETR9, Leica GR25, and Septentrio PolaRx4/4TR.
However, most of these receivers are located in Europe and
Americas (see Fig. 1). Therefore, the regional BDS constella-
tion [i.e., satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) and inclined
geosynchronous orbit (IGSO)] is not well covered by current
network.
The DCB products of P1-P2, P1-C1, and P2-C2 released
by CODE are produced based on the legacy GPS and
GLONASS RINEX 2 observations. Within the MGEX net-
work, more signals and observations in RINEX 3 format are
monitored with the modernized GPS, as well as the new BDS
and Galileo systems, meaning that the concept of traditional
DCB needs to be extended to multi-GNSS biases. It should be
123
212 N. Wang et al.

mentioned that no common standard choice of multi-GNSS
biases has yet been recommended by the IGS BCWG. The-
oretically, if there are N types of code observations, only
(N−1) types of intra- and inter-frequency biases are needed.
Table 1 Receiver and observation types within MGEX for differential
code bias estimation (as of Dec. 2014)
Receiver type GNSS observation
Trimble NETR9 GPS: 1C, 2W, 2X, 5X
GLO: 1C, 1P, 2C, 2P
GAL: 1X, 5X, 7X, 8X
BDS: 2I, 7I, 6I
Javad TR_G2T, GPS: 1C, 1W, 2W, 2X, 5X
Javad TRE_G3TH GLO: 1C, 1P, 2C, 2P
GAL: 1X, 5X
Leica GR10/ GR25 GPS: 1C, 2S, 2W, 5Q
GRX1200+GNSS GLO: 1C, 2C, 2P
GAL: 1C, 5Q, 7Q, 8Q
BDS: 2I (1I), 7I
Septentrio GPS: 1C, 1W, 2W, 2L, 5Q
PolaRx4/4TR, GLO: 1C, 2C, 2P
AsteRx3 GAL: 1C, 5Q, 7Q, 8Q
BDS: 2I (1I), 7I
NovAtel OEM6 GPS: 1C, 2W, 5Q
GLO: 1C, 2P
GAL: 1C, 5Q
This means that a non-redundant or minimal set of DCB
would be sufficient. However, it is difficult to derive such a set
of DCB in practice due to two reasons: (1) up to 15 different
signals are defined in RINEX 3 standard for each individual
navigation constellation, which may form a large number
of possible signal pairs and the associated differential code
biases; (2) current monitoring receivers may not support the
tracking of the corresponding signals which have been used
Sites to form the pre-defined DCB. For the available MGEX obser-
vations, we divide the code observations by different types
44 of receivers and satellite constellations and provide our own
set of multi-GNSS differential code biases (see Table 2).
The adopted set of biases in Table 2 does not contain
redundant bias information, and the DCB estimates would
32 directly meet the demands of most multi-GNSS applications.
Some bias types are missing in comparison with that of DLR;
however, the DCB of interest may be reconstructed from the
23 linearly independent set of DCB shown in Table 2. It should
be mentioned, though, that the chaining of multiple DCB
may differ from direct DCB estimates in practice, due to the
different sets of stations/receivers used in the determination
15 of DCB and the fact that satellite and receiver biases are not
fully decoupled (Hauschild and Montenbruck 2014).
1 3 Multi-GNSS bias estimation algorithms
The IGGDCB proposed by Li et al. (2012) was improved
to estimate the multi-GNSS biases. Generally, there are four

Table 2 Selected set of intra-

GNSS system Code bias type Receiver type
and inter-frequency biases for
current MGEX code Trimble NETR9 Javad Leica Septentrio
observations
√ √
GPS Intra-frequency bias C1C-C1W
√ √
C2W-C2X
√
C2W-C2S
√
C2W-C2L
√ √ √ √
Inter-frequency bias C1W-C2W
√ √
C1C-C5X
√ √
C1C-C5Q
√ √
GLO Intra-frequency bias C1C-C1P
√ √ √ √
C2C-C2P
√ √
Inter-frequency bias C1P-C2P
√ √
GAL Inter-frequency bias C1C-C5Q
√ √
C1C-C7Q
√
C1C-C8Q
√ √
C1X-C5X
√
C1X-C7X
√
C1X-C8X
√ √
BDS Inter-frequency bias C2I-C7I
√
C2I-C6I

123
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations
Fig. 2 Flowchart of daily DCB
process with multi-GNSS
observations
parts in IGGDCB algorithms for multi-GNSS bias estima-
tion: (1) determination of intra-frequency bias directly from
raw multi-GNSS observations; (2) extraction of ionospheric
observables from multi-GNSS observations; (3) establish-
ment of local ionospheric model and satellite-plus-receiver
(SPR) inter-frequency bias estimation over each individual
station; and (4) calculation of satellite- and receiver-specific
inter-frequency bias based on SPR estimates. A flowchart of
the daily DCB estimation method is illustrated in Fig. 2. The
estimation of intra-frequency biases is discussed in Sect. 3.1,
while the remaining steps (2)–(4) related to the estimation of
inter-frequency biases are jointly discussed in Sect. 3.2. The
intra-frequency biases are estimated first, because various
GPS receivers provide only C1C, but no C1W observations.
Making use of the C1CC1W bias from step (1), C1WC2W
inter-frequency bias can subsequently be determined using
all stations in the network.
3.1 Intra-frequency bias determination
The intra-frequency bias is directly extracted from raw multi-
GNSS code observations in this study. Ignoring multipath and
j
noise, the measurement of code delay (Pi ) between the jth
satellite and ith receiver can be expressed as
213
j j j j
Pi = ρi + c · (ti − t j ) + Ti + Ii + c · (bi + b j ) (1)
j
based on the geometric range (ρi ), the satellite and receiver
clock offsets (t j and ti ), the speed of light c, tropospheric and
j j
ionospheric range delays (Ti and Ii ), as well as the hardware
delays in the satellite (b j ) and receiver (bi ). It is obvious
that the pseudorange difference for noise- and multipath-free
observations directly provides the corresponding SPR intra-
frequency bias.
In practice, the satellite and receiver DCB parameters are
considered to be constant through the data arc (e.g. 1-day).
Assuming that the observation noise and multipath errors
have a zero mean over a single day, the combined SPR intra-
frequency biases (SPRs1 −s2 ) for each signal pair, station, and
satellite can be determined from a mean value over the avail-
able data arc:
1 
N
SPRs1 −s2 = (Ps1,k − Ps2,k ), (2)
N
k=1
where Ps1,k and Ps2,k are the pseudorange observations simul-
taneously obtained by tracking two distinct signals s1 and s2
at the same frequency for epoch k, and N is total epoch
number. With a zero-mean reference for the satellites, the
123
214
intra-frequency bias in satellite and receiver can be sepa-
rately estimated. Details of this processing can refer to that
described in Sect. 3.2.
3.2 Inter-frequency bias estimation
The inter-frequency bias estimation comprises the extrac-
tion of ionospheric observables from raw multi-GNSS data,
the local ionospheric modeling, and finally, the satellite-
and receiver-specific DCB determination. The ionospheric
observables can be simply obtained by the geometry-free
combination of dual-frequency code observations, but they
are seriously affected by the noise and multipath effects.
In order to improve the accuracy of ionospheric observ-
ables, the approach of “pseudorange-leveled carrier-phase”
is used (Mannucci et al. 1998; Schaer 1999). The processed
ionospheric TEC and DCB measurement can be expressed
as

P̃4,k = v · ST ECk + c · SPR + ε
(3)
SPR = Bs + Br ,
where P̃4,k is the smoothed ionospheric TEC and DCB
measurement after applying the technique of “pseudorange-
leveled carrier-phase” at epoch k; v = 40.28 × 1016 ×
( f 1−2 − f 2−2 ), where f 1 and f 2 are the two frequencies of the
carrier phase; STECk is the line-of-sight (LOS) ionospheric
TEC along the signal propagation path from satellite to
receiver; SPR is the satellite-plus-receiver bias for the signals
used, which can be divided into the sum of a satellite-specific
part (B s ) and a receiver-specific contribution (Br ); c is the
speed of light; and ε is the noise of ionospheric measurement.
In order to derive SPR DCBs from the processed
ionospheric TEC and DCB measurement, the correspond-
ing ionospheric delay should be precisely corrected. Within
IGGDCB, the ionospheric delay is individually modeled by
the GTS function over each station based on a thin-layer
approximation (Yuan and Ou 2004), in which the slant total
electron content STEC(z, φ, h) along LOS is described as
the product of vertical electron content VTEC(φ, h) at the
ionospheric pierce point (IPP) and a simplified mapping func-
tion M(z) depending on the satellite’s zenith angle z at the
corresponding station. The VTEC is itself described as the
sum of a two-dimensional polynomial of geographic latitude
and local time and a finite Fourier series of local time:
⎧ estimation. The covariance matrix of the estimated parame-
⎪ STEC(z, φ, h) = VTEC(φ, h) · M(z)
⎪
⎪ n
max m
⎪
⎪
max
⎪
⎨ VTEC(φ, h) = { E nm (φ − φ0 )n · h m }
n=0 m=0
(4)
⎪ k
⎪
⎪ +
max
{Ck cos(k · h) + Sk sin(k · h)}
⎪ D X̂ X̂ = σ̂02 · ⎣
⎪
⎪ D X̂
⎩ k=0
M(z) = [1 − sin2 z · (1 + Hion /R E /)]−1/2
123
N. Wang et al.
where φ and φ0 are the geographic latitude of the ionospheric
IPP and station, respectively; h is the local time at the
ionospheric IPP; n max and m max are the maximum degree
of the polynomials; kmax is the maximum degree of the finite
Fourier series; E nm , Ck , and Sk are the model coefficients to
be estimated; Hion is the altitude of ionospheric single-layer
shell; and RE is the mean radius of the earth. The degree
of GTS coefficients can be set differently for different sites
and during different levels of solar activities (Yuan and Ou
2004; Li et al. 2012). In this study, the maximum degrees
of the polynomials and the finite Fourier series were set
as 2 (n max = m max = 2) and 4 (kmax = 4), respectively,
and the height of the assumed single layer was selected as
Hion = 400 km.
Assuming that the pseudorange and carrier phase mea-
surements are uncorrelated, the variance of the smoothed
ionospheric measurement σ 2 can be estimated as (Schaer
P̃4,k
1999)
1 2 N −1 2
σ P̃2 = σ + σ L 4,k , (5)
4,k N P4,k N
where σ P24,k and σ L24,k are the variances of TEC measure-
ments derived from geometry-free combination of code and
carrier phase observations, respectively, and N is the smooth-
ing length. σ P4,k and σ L 4,k are set as 3 TECu and 0.1 TECu
in this study, which corresponds to an accuracy of 0.3 m for
pseudorange and 0.05 cycle for carrier phase measurements,
respectively.
It can be seen that the accuracy of the smoothed
ionospheric measurement is related to the smoothing length.
For a given smoothing length N = 60 (corresponding to 30
mins for GNSS measurements with a sampling rate of 30 s),
the noise level of the smoothed ionospheric measurement is
less than 0.4 TECu. As shown in Eq. (6), the weight of the
ionospheric TEC measurement also depends on the elevation
angle (e) of the satellite.
p = 1/(1 + cos2 e). (6)
Based on the ionospheric observables obtained from a
single site, and the assumption that SPR DCB is con-
stant throughout a single day (Schaer 1999), the GTS
ionospheric coefficients and the combined SPR DCB of each
satellite/receiver can be determined by least squares (LS)
ters can be expressed as
⎡ ⎤
D X̂
GTS X̂ GTS
0
⎢ σ̂02 ⎥
⎦, (7)
0 SPR X̂ SPR
σ̂02
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations 215

where σ̂02 is a posteriori variance of unit weight of the LS solu- where H is the constraint vector, and the elements of H
tion; D X̂ GTS X̂ GTS and D X̂ SPR X̂ SPR are the covariance matrices corresponding to X̂ sat,dcb are one but zero for others.
corresponding to GTS coefficients and SPR DCB parame- The quality of SPR DCB “observables” obtained at each
ters, respectively. site is different, which is caused by the noise of the smoothed
By repeating above procedures station by station, the com- ionospheric measurement and the varying performance of the
bined SPR DCBs can be determined for all contributing sites GTS ionospheric model at different stations. A weight matrix
and all observed satellites. Assuming that the numbers of P, as shown in Eq. (10), is used to reflect the varying quality
satellite and receiver DCBs for estimation are u 1 and u 2 , of SPR DCBs:
respectively, the SPR DCBs for all satellites and receivers
can be written in the matrix form as P = D −1 , (10)
Ẑ SPR Ẑ SPR
⎧
⎪
⎪ Z SPR = F · X̂ dcb
⎪
⎪  T where D Ẑ SPR Ẑ SPR is the covariance matrix corresponding to
⎪
⎨ T T SPR DCBs, obtained from the LS solution of the local GTS
X̂ dcb = X̂ sat,dcb X̂ rec,dcb
(u 1 +u 2 )×1
(8) ionospheric modeling. Combining Eqs. (8)–(10), satellite
⎪
⎪ 
1×u 1 1×u 2

⎪
⎪ and receiver DCBs for the signals used can be separately
⎪
⎩ F = n×uA B ,
n×(u 1 +u 2 ) 1 n×u 2 determined by the constrained LS estimation. The satellite
and receiver DCB estimates are shown as follows:
where the vector Z SPR , with a total of n rows, is the SPR DCB ⎧ −1
⎨ X̂ dcb = (N + H H ) W
T
estimates obtained from individual site, considered as the ⎪
“observable” in LS adjustment; X̂ dcb is the DCB estimates, D X̂ X̂ = σ̂ 2 · (N + H T H )−1 (11)
which consists of the vector of satellite ( X̂ sat,dcb ) and receiver ⎪
⎩
N = F T P F, W = F T P Z SPR
( X̂ rec,dcb ) DCBs; F is the design matrix that consists of the
matrix A and B, where just a single element in each row of
where X̂ dcb is the IGGDCB-based satellite and receiver DCB
matrix A and B is one for the corresponding satellite and
estimates; D X̂ X̂ is the covariance matrix of the IGGDCB-
receiver, but zero for others.
based DCB estimates; σ̂ 2 is a posteriori variance of unit
The resulting normal equation matrix F T F exhibits a rank
weight and P is the weight matrix.
deficiency since the bias common to all satellites cannot be
IGGDCB method takes advantage of local ionospheric
distinguished from the corresponding bias common to all
information generated with all available observations of the
receivers. Therefore, Eq. (8) cannot be estimated if no a priori
LOS GNSS satellites over each station, which overcomes
satellite or receiver DCB reference value is given. Generally,
the shortage of modern GNSS tracking stations (site number
the rank deficiency can be eliminated through (Montenbruck
and distribution) for global ionospheric modeling. While a
et al. 2014) (1) fixing a single receiver bias; (2) imposing a
few stations would be suitable for DCB estimation within
zero-mean condition for all satellites; or (3) selecting those
IGGDCB (Li et al. 2012), it is expected that more globally
satellites with relatively stable DCB as the zero reference.
well-distributed receivers would increase the accuracy and
The first approach is suitable for GNSS control segment with
stability of the DCB solution. In this study, all available track-
calibrated reference receivers, and the second approach is
ing stations within the MGEX network were used to estimate
commonly used for DCB separation within the IGS. The
the multi-GNSS DCBs as defined in Table 2. In addition, the
zero-mean satellite reference does not consider the differ-
cutoff elevation was set as 20◦ to reduce the multipath and
ent levels of stability in individual satellite DCB, which may
ionospheric mapping function error.
affect the final DCB estimates. To reduce the impact of the
satellite with poor stability, some activities have been prac-
ticed to select those satellites with relatively stable DCBs as
the satellite reference (IGS 2012; Li et al. 2012). In accor- 4 Results and discussion
dance with the satellite and receiver DCB separation strategy
within the IGS, the zero-mean satellite reference, as shown Satellite and receiver intra- and inter-frequency bias esti-
in Eq. (9), is also applied in this study: mates from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2014 have been
generated with all MGEX tracking stations and observations
⎧ at an interval of 30 s. The performances of the IGGDCB-
⎪
⎪ H · X̂ dcb = 0
⎪
⎪  T based satellite DCB estimates (denoted by IGG) are assessed
⎪
⎪
⎨ T T
X̂ dcb = X̂ sat,dcb X̂ rec,dcb by comparing with those released by CODE, DLR as well
(u 1 +u 2 )×1 1×u 1 1×u 2 (9) as the broadcast TGD or BGD parameters. The LS residuals
⎪
⎪  
⎪
⎪  
⎪ e within IGGDCB are analyzed in Sect. 4.1. The accuracy of
⎩ 1×(uH+u ) = 1×u 1 1×u 2 , e = 1 . . . 1 ,
⎪ 0
1 2 1×u 1 GPS and GLONASS satellite DCB estimates (including both

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216
the intra- and inter-frequency biases) are validated in Sect.
4.2, and the performances of BDS and Galileo satellite DCB
estimates are evaluated in Sects. 4.3 and 4.4, respectively.
4.1 Validation of IGGDCB algorithms
Since SPR DCBs were estimated together with local
ionospheric modeling within IGGDCB, the established local
ionospheric model should be capable of representing the
structure and variation of the corresponding local ionosphere.
In order to demonstrate the performance of the local GTS
model, the ionospheric residuals in GTS and SPR DCB solu-
tion of a particular day (July 24, 2014) at WUH2 and CUT0
sites are illustrated in Fig. 3. WUH2 is located at low lat-
itudes of China, which supports to track GPS, GLONASS,
and Galileo signals; and CUT0 is located at mid-latitudes
of Australia, which also supports to track BeiDou signals
in addition to the above three constellations. As shown in
Fig. 3, while the ionospheric residuals show a near zero bias
(−0.11 and −0.08 TECu for WUH2 and CUT0, respectively)
Fig. 3 Residual distribution of
ionospheric delay in GTS and
SPR DCB solution at WUH2
and CUT0 sites (July 24, 2014)
Fig. 4 A posteriori sigma of
the IGGDCB-established local
GTS ionospheric model at each
station. The stations are aligned
by geomagnetic latitudes at
horizontal axis
123
N. Wang et al.
at both sites, the residuals of WUH2 are more scattered than
that of CUT0 [3.45 TECu vs. 1.79 TECu in terms of stan-
dard deviation (STD)]. This indicates that GTS function can
capture the subtle variation of local ionosphere; however, the
performance of GTS function may be different at different
stations.
In order to validate the above assumption, a posteriori
variance of unit weight in Eq. (7), which indicates the consis-
tency between the established GTS function and ionospheric
TEC measurements in LS solution, is shown in Fig. 4 for the
same day, with the stations aligned by geomagnetic latitudes.
It can be seen that the differences between the ionospheric
TEC obtained from local ionospheric model and multi-GNSS
observations are less than 3 TECu with the exception of two
stations at low latitudes of southern hemisphere. In addi-
tion, the accuracy of local GTS ionospheric model is lower
at low latitudes than that obtained at high and mid-latitudes,
which presents a similar trend with the levels of ionospheric
activity at different latitudes. To mitigate the impact of
ionospheric modeling errors on the final satellite and receiver
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations
Fig. 5 Residual distribution of
satellite- and receiver-specific
DCB solution for GPS,
GLONASS, BDS and Galileo
(July 24, 2014)
DCB estimates, a weighting matrix as shown in Eq. (10)
was used to reflect the varying quality of SPR DCBs in LS
estimation.
The residual distribution of satellite- and receiver-specific
DCB solution for GPS, GLONASS, as well as BDS and
Galileo for the same day (July 24, 2014) is also shown in
Fig. 5. It can be found that SPR residuals of the four con-
stellations fit well with normal distribution but seem to be
slightly asymmetric about zero. The STDs of SPR residu-
als for GPS, BDS, and Galileo are 0.62, 0.58, and 0.33 ns,
respectively, while that of GLONASS is 1.27 ns. The SPR
residuals of GLONASS are more scattered than those of GPS,
BDS, and Galileo, which would affect the final satellite and
receiver DCB estimates of GLONASS.
4.2 GPS and GLONASS DCBs
GPS and GLONASS intra-frequency biases
The monthly P1-C1 (corresponding to C1WC1C for GPS
and C1PC1C for GLONASS) and P2-C2 (C2PC2C for
GLONASS) DCB products of CODE are used for val-
idating the performance of the estimated intra-frequency
biases in GPS and GLONASS satellites. Two types of
intra-frequency bias released by CODE are included in
the analysis. The first one is provided in P1C1yymm.DCB
217
file (denoted by CODE), which is produced as part of
CODE’s satellite clock estimation procedure and only con-
tains the DCB in satellites. The other one is provided in
P1C1yymm_RINEX.DCB or P2C2yymm_RINEX.DCB file
(denoted as CODERNX), which is directly generated from
GPS or GLONASS RINEX pseudorange measurements and
contains the DCB in both satellites and receivers. Further-
more, the daily intra-frequency bias estimates of DLR are
also introduced for comparison.
The monthly GPS satellite C1CC1W estimates of CODE,
DLR, and IGG for December 2014 are presented in Fig.
6. For unambiguous identification, individual satellites are
labeled by their pseudo-random noise (PRN) number fol-
lowed by their space vehicle number (SVN) given in
brackets. It is shown that GPS C1CC1W biases mainly
vary between -2.0 and 3.0 ns, and C1CC1W estimates
of CODE, DLR, and IGG are very similar. Differences
between the monthly C1CC1W biases calculated by CODE
and other organizations are illustrated in Fig. 7. It can be
seen that the differences vary from −0.6 to 0.5 ns, and
G29 (G057) exhibits the largest difference during the period
(0.59, 0.53, and 0.52 ns for DLR, IGG, and CODERNX,
respectively). The root-mean-square (RMS) values of the dif-
ferences between CODE and DLR/IGG/CODERNX agree
well with each other (0.26, 0.23, and 0.23 ns for indi-
vidual estimate), indicating that C1CC1W biases directly
123
218
Fig. 6 GPS C1CC1W DCB
estimates of CODE, DLR, and
IGG for December 2014
Fig. 7 Differences of
DLR/IGG/CODERNX GPS
C1CC1W DCB estimates with
respect to the monthly P1-C1
product of CODE for December
2014
extracted from raw RINEX observation may perform at the
same level if a sufficient number of contributing stations is
used.
The performance of GPS C2WC2L, C2WC2S, and
C2WC2X biases have earlier been assessed in the study of
Montenbruck et al. (2014) over a 3-month period in 2013,
and a standard deviation of 0.3 ns between the differences of
three biases was reported. Up to December 2014, the mod-
ernized civil L2 signal (L2C) has been transmitted by a total
of 15 GPS satellites. The differential code biases between
C2W and C2L/C2S/C2X signals are presented in Fig. 8. It
shows that the three biases vary between −0.8 and 1.5 ns,
and the estimates of C2WC2S and C2WC2X are quite simi-
lar. STD of the differences between C2WC2L and C2WC2S
is 0.31 ns, and that of C2WC2L and C2WC2X is 0.25 ns. The
distinction of L2C tracking mode is impossible within the old
RINEX 2 format, which inhibits a more detailed investiga-
tion of the characteristics of the three biases with a large set
of IGS legacy tracking stations. However, it has been sug-
gested to carefully distinguish the three L2C tracking modes
if an accuracies of 0.7 ns (i.e., below a carrier phase wave-
123
N. Wang et al.
length) is desired for DCB estimates (Montenbruck et al.
2014).
The differential code biases between GLONASS C1C
and C1P, as well as C2C and C2P observations are rarely
discussed. At present, estimates for both of these biases
are directly extracted from raw RINEX measurements by
CODE and DLR. Figure 9 gives an example of GLONASS
C1CC1P and C2CC2P biases for December 2014. It can
be seen that C1CC1P estimates vary from −3.0 to 4.0 ns,
and C2CC2P vary from −1.0 to 2.0 ns. The biases esti-
mated from CODERNX and that from IGG agree well.
The precision levels of GPS and GLONASS intra-frequency
bias estimates within MGEX network are summarized in
Table 3. The DCB estimates of IGG and DLR are compared
to direct (CODERNX) and indirect (CODE) intra-frequency
bias products of CODE. It can be seen that the accuracies of
the bias estimates of DLR and IGG are in similar magnitude.
However, it should be noted that GLONASS C1CC1P and
C2CC2P bias errors (about 0.2 and 0.4 ns) relative to CODE
are much higher than that of GPS C1CC1W estimates (about
0.1 ns).
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations 219

Fig. 8 Monthly variation of

GPS C2WC2L, C2WC2S, and
C2WC2X biases for December
2014

Fig. 9 GLONASS C1CC1P

and C2CC2P DCB estimates
directly extracted from RINEX
observations for December
2014. Satellites are identified by
the GLONASS slot number
followed by the frequency
channel number in brackets

Table 3 Consistency of GPS

System Bias type IGG-CODE DLR-CODE Notes
and GLONASS satellite
intra-frequency biases of GPS C1CC1W 0.20 0.23 Relative to CODE
DLR/IGG with CODE for the
year 2014 (unit: ns) GPS C1CC1W 0.08 0.12 Relative to CODERNX
GLO C1CC1P 0.21 0.18 Relative to CODERNX
GLO C2CC2P 0.39 0.30 Relative to CODERNX
The table provides the RMS for the differences of two DCB products after a zero-mean alignment

GPS and GLONASS inter-frequency biases
GPS and GLONASS P1-P2 (corresponding to C1WC2W
for GPS and C1PC2P for GLONASS) DCB products of
CODE provided in the daily GIM product in IONosphere
map Exchange (IONEX) format are used as reference for
validation. Figure 10 shows the mean value and STD of GPS
C1WC2W and GLONASS C1PC2P estimates for each indi-
vidual satellite during the period 2013–2014. It is obvious
that the consistency of GPS inter-frequency bias estimates
with CODE is much higher than that of GLONASS biases.
C1WC2W estimates of DLR and IGG have a mean differ-

123
220 N. Wang et al.

Fig. 10 Bias and STD of the

MGEX-based C1WC2W and
C1PC2P DCB estimates relative
to CODE for the period
2013–2014. Dots denote the
mean of DLR/IGG-CODE
differences of the corresponding
satellite, and the length of the
vertical lines denotes the
respective standard deviations

Table 4 Consistency of the

System Bias type IGG-CODE DLR-CODE System Bias Type IGG-DLR TGD-DLR
MGEX-based satellite
inter-frequency bias estimates GPS C1WC1W 0.29 0.24 GPS C1CC5X 0.22
with CODE/DLR for the period
2013–2014 (unit: ns) GLO C1PC2P 0.56 0.84 C1CC5Q 0.29

System Bias Type IGG-DLR BGD-DLR System Bias Type IGG-DLR TGD-DLR

GAL C1XC5X 0.22 0.53 BDS C2IC7I 0.33 1.27

C1XC7X 0.21 0.56 C2IC6I 0.39 1.38
C1XC8X 0.22
C1CC5Q 0.26
C1CC7Q 0.26
C1CC8Q 0.27
The table provides the RMS for the differences of two DCB products after zero-mean alignment

ence of about −0.5–0.7 ns relative to those of CODE, while
the difference varies between −1.2 and 2.0 ns for the esti-
mated C1PC2P bias. The standard deviation of C1WC2W
and C1PC2P bias differences is approximately 0.07–0.50 and
0.15–0.65 ns, respectively. RMS values for the differences
between MGEX-based GPS and GLONASS bias estimates
and those of CODE are presented in Table 4. The RMS val-
ues for DLR-CODE differences of C1WC2W and C1PC2P
are 0.24 and 0.84 ns, while they are 0.29 (C1WC2W) and
0.56 ns (C1PC2P), respectively, for the IGG solution.
It has earlier been indicated that bias estimates may be
systematically affected by the choice of the tracking network
and the employed receivers (Montenbruck et al. 2014). This
concern is likewise applicable for the comparison of DLR
and IGG bias estimates (which are based on the MGEX net-
work) and the CODE products (which are based on the legacy
IGS network). To quantify the impact of the network on the
present results, the IGGDCB method has also been applied
for the determination of GPS and GLONASS inter-frequency
biases with about 180 sites of the IGS for July, 2014. While
the RMS of the IGG-CODE difference of C1WC2W and
C1PC2P biases amounts to 0.26 and 0.52 ns for the MGEX-
based solution in this period, it decreases to 0.12 and 0.33
ns, respectively, when using the IGS network. Since the IGG-
CODE bias differences for individual satellites well exceed
the standard deviation of the bias determination when using
the MGEX network, the improved consistency of the IGS-
based solution is attributed to the different set of receivers

123
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations
in this network rather than just the larger overall number
of stations. This is in proper accord with Hauschild and
Montenbruck (2014) who identified a notable impact of the
receiver type on the estimation of satellite DCB. For the next
step, a classification of receivers into consistent groups and
an estimation of biases for each group will be further verified.
The bias and STD of C1PC2P DCBs relative to CODE
are sorted by GLONASS frequency channel number (Fig. 10,
bottom). It can be seen that the variations of DLR-CODE and
IGG-CODE are highly correlated, even though the range of
DLR-CODE differences appears higher than that of IGG-
CODE. There is also a notable dependence on frequency
channel number for both DLR-CODE and IGG-CODE dif-
ferences, which may be attributed to inter-channel biases.
Different from the DCB estimation of the GPS constellation,
the receiver bias of GLONASS also depends on the frequency
channel since GLONASS satellites transmit their signals on
slightly different frequencies.
The average monthly stability of GPS and GLONASS
DCB estimates of each individual satellite obtained by
CODE, DLR and IGG during 2013–2014 is illustrated in
Fig. 11. The monthly stability index is calculated once
every calendar month (Wilson and Mannucci 1993), which
is shown as
 with the products of DLR.
D
d=1 (b̂ − b̄ j )2
d, j
S =
j
, (12)
D−1
where S j is the stability index of satellite j in one month;
b̂d, j is the daily DCB estimates for satellite jobtained on the
day of d; b̄ j is the monthly mean DCB estimates of satellite
j; D is the number of days in the corresponding month.
GPS C1WC2W monthly stability indices for individual
satellites exhibit a scatter in the range of (0.03, 0.07), (0.06,
0.10), and (0.09, 0.14) ns for CODE, DLR, and IGG, respec-
tively. For GLONASS C1PC2P biases, stabilities of (0.05,
0.12), (0.09, 0.23), and (0.12, 0.26) ns are obtained, respec-
tively. The results show that (1) the bias estimates of GPS
satellites are more stable than those of GLONASS satellites
for the three solutions (CODE, DLR, and IGG); (2) the stabil-
ity index of GPS and GLONASS DCB of CODE estimated
with legacy IGS tracking stations is much better than those
of the MGEX-based bias solutions of DLR and IGG (pre-
sumably as a result of the notably larger number of stations
and also the three-day solution of CODE DCB products);
and (3) the bias estimates of IGG present the worst monthly
stability; however, it can still achieve a mean value of 0.11
and 0.18 ns for C1WC2W and C1PC2P biases, respectively.
The instability of IGG solution may be caused by the inac-
curate modeling of local ionospheric model at low-latitude
or equatorial sites in the procedure of IGGDCB (as shown
in Fig. 4). It has been recommended to select the tracking
stations that can provide high-quality data and are located in
221
the area where ionospheric activities are relatively quiet for
IGGDCB-based DCB estimation (Li et al. 2012). In addition,
the ionospheric mismodeling induced by the simple constant
height thin-layer model should be noted. This simple assump-
tion was demonstrated to be responsible for a significant and
systematic ionospheric modeling error, compared with two-
shell voxel models (Hernández-Pajares et al. 1999), and such
error is likewise mapped in terms of DCB determination error
(Juan et al. 1997). This will be verified for further improve-
ment of the IGGDCB approach.
Figure 12 shows the accuracy and monthly stability of the
GPS C1CC5X and C1CC5Q estimates for the period 2013–
2014. Bias and STD of the two DCBs are calculated with
respected to the estimates of DLR. The ranges of the differ-
ences between the estimates of IGG and DLR are −0.17–0.12
and −0.26–0.15 ns for C1CC5X and C1CC5Q, respectively.
The STDs of C1CC5X and C1CC5Q differences between
IGG and DLR amount to 0.13–0.45 and 0.18–0.45 ns, respec-
tively. For the monthly stability, the estimates of DLR are still
more stable than those of IGG. The mean values of 0.09 and
0.12 ns are obtained for C1CC5X and C1CC5Q estimates of
DLR, respectively, whereas higher scatters are obtained for
the estimates of IGG. It is obvious that the IGGDCB-based
GPS C1CC5X and C1CC5Q estimates are reliable compared
4.3 BDS DCBs
The current BDS transmits B1, B2, and B3 signals and is
thus the first full triple-frequency navigation system. Dif-
ferent from the other GNSS constellations, BDS satellite
clock corrections are referred to the B3 signal rather than the
dual-frequency ionospheric-free linear combination. To keep
signal coherence, two timing group delay parameters (TGD1
and TGD2) are defined in BDS navigation message, to pro-
vide corrections for B1 and B2 signals w.r.t B3 signal (CSNO
2013). TGD1 and TGD2 can be explained as B1–B3 and B2–
B3 differential code biases, respectively. The inter-frequency
bias estimates (including C2IC7I, C2IC6I, and C7IC6I) pro-
vided by DLR exhibit the most reliable BDS bias products
at present. In the following analysis, BDS broadcast TGD
and DCB estimates of IGG are compared with that of DLR.
All TGD parameters are normalized to a zero constellation
average before validation. The satellite C13 (or the so-called
BeiDou M3 satellite) has malfunctioned since the beginning
of the year 2014 and no longer serves as part of the current
BDS. Thus, the performance of the DCB estimates of C13 is
not included during the corresponding period.
BDS C2IC7I and C2IC6I DCB products of DLR for a full
span of two years (2013–2014) are shown in Fig. 13. It can
be found that the resulting biases appear to be fairly stable,
which are confined to a range of ±8 ns with an exception of
GEO satellite C01 (the value of C2IC7I DCB of C01 is about
123
222 N. Wang et al.

Fig. 11 Monthly stability of

C1WC2W and C1PC2P DCB
estimates determined by CODE,
DLR, and IGG for the period
2013–2014

Fig. 12 Statistical results of the

estimated GPS C1CC5X and
C1CC5Q DCBs, including the
bias and STD of the two
IGGDCB-based DCBs relative
to DLR (upper) and the monthly
stability of the two biases
determined by DLR and IGG
(bottom) during the period
2013–2014

15 ns). If look closely at the bias variation of the MEO (C11–
C14) satellites, one may note a small oscillation with a period
of approximately one week. This variation may be related
to the one-week repeat cycle of the MEO ground track and
indicates a systematic impact of the tracking network. It also
should be mentioned that DCB estimates of C13 were still
available until mid-2014 for DLR, although its navigation
message terminated earlier.
Bias and STD of C2IC7I and C2IC6I for each individual
BeiDou satellite during the period 2013–2014 are shown in
Fig. 14. It can be seen that the differences between the DCBs
estimated by IGG and those by DLR mainly vary from −0.15

123
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations 223

Fig. 13 Time series of BDS

C2IC7I and C2IC6I DCBs
during the period 2013–2014.
The results have been
normalized by a zero-mean
constraint across the 13
continuously operating satellites
with the exception of C13

Fig. 14 Difference of IGG

DCB estimates and broadcast
TDGs with respect to DLR
DCBs of BDS during the period
2013–2014. Dots and bars
indicate the mean values and the
standard deviations of the daily
bias differences, respectively

to 0.25 ns except for the satellite C03, whereas the broadcast
TGD shows a mean bias of −2.5 to 2.6 ns relative to DLR.
The standard deviation of IGSO (C06–C10) satellites is sig-
nificantly smaller than that of GEO (C01–C05) and MEO
(C11–C14) satellites. Compared to BDS broadcast TGDs, the
IGG results exhibit a notably better consistency with DLR
bias products. This is partly related to the different sets of
the tracking network and receivers used by IGG/DLR and
BeiDou control segment. In fact, Guo (2015) has shown that
the improved single-point positioning results are achieved in
BeiDou-only positioning with modern BDS receivers when
using MGEX-based DCB rather than the broadcast TGD. The

123
224
differences between the broadcast TGDs and the estimates of
DLR may amount to a few nanoseconds, for individual satel-
lite, which has raised concerns that TGDs may include the
satellite-induced group delay contributions (Montenbruck
et al. 2014).
In terms of the DCB estimates of IGG, the precision levels
of 0.41, 0.16, and 0.32 ns are achieved for C2IC7I biases of
GEO, IGSO, and MEO satellites, respectively, and those for
C2IC6I estimates are 0.50, 0.28, and 0.39 ns. With regard
to the broadcast TGDs, the consistencies between broadcast
TGD1 and DLR C2IC7I bias are 1.69, 0.73, and 1.43 ns
for GEO, IGSO, and MEO satellites, respectively, and the
same levels of precision are achieved for TGD1-TGD2 (cor-
responding to C2IC6I bias), which are 1.64, 0.83, and 1.75 ns.
DCB estimates of IGSO satellites show a better performance
than those of GEO and MEO satellites. This can be attributed
to the longer observation period and larger number of obser-
vations as compared to the MEO satellites [this phenomenon
has also been noted and discussed in the study of Zhang
et al. 2014)] as well as the adverse multipath characteristics
of the GEO observations (Wang et al. 2014). Furthermore,
the weekly bias variation of the MEO satellites, as shown in
Fig. 13, would affect the stability index, which may be one
of the reasons why MEO satellite DCBs appear to have an
inferior performance than those of IGSO satellites. It can be
Fig. 15 Monthly stability of
BDS C2IC7I DCB estimates
determined by DLR and IGG for
the year 2013 and 2014
Fig. 16 The number of stations
contributing to BDS satellite
DCB estimation at DLR and
IGG for the period of
2013–2014
123
N. Wang et al.
concluded that the precision of BDS DCB derived by IGG is
generally better than 0.4 ns with respect to DLR, and that of
broadcast TGD is about 1.4 ns (Table 4).
The monthly stability of BDS DCB estimates of DLR and
IGG is illustrated in Fig. 15 for the example of C2IC7I bias.
The monthly stability values of DLR bias solutions are about
0.24, 0.12, and 0.19 ns for GEO, IGSO, and MEO satellites,
respectively, which are similar for the years 2013 and 2014.
The stability of the IGG solutions in 2014 is more stable
than that in 2013 (0.19 vs. 0.26 ns on average). As shown
in Fig. 16, more contributing sites are used in the processing
of IGG for the year 2014 than that for 2013, indicating that
the DCB estimates may become more stable with more con-
tributing stations and observations. There appears a notable
drop in the station numbers contributing for DCB estimation
of DLR since Sep. 2014, but this issue has been fixed in the
MGEX bias product for the first quarter of 2015. Consider-
ing individual types of BDS satellites, the stability indices
again confirm an improved performance of the IGSO DCB
estimates as compared to that of GEO and MEO satellites.
4.4 Galileo DCBs
The European Galileo comprises four in-orbit-validation
(IOV) satellites by the end of 2014, offering a total of three
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations
signals (E5a, E5b, and E5a+b) in the combined E5ab band
in addition to the E1 open service. Two distinct satellite
clock offsets are defined in Galileo Interface Control Doc-
ument (ICD), which are calculated from the conventional
E1/E5a and E1/E5b dual-frequency ionospheric-free linear
combination. Hence, DCB or BGD parameters accounting
for satellite hardware delay should be applied for the Galileo
E1, E5a, or E5b single-frequency users when using the cor-
responding satellite clock corrections (OS-SIS-ICD 2010).
The Galileo DCB estimates of DLR are regarded as ref-
erence in the following comparison. In addition, all BGD
parameters are converted to DCBs and also normalized to
a zero constellation average before validation. More details
about the relationship between Galileo DCB and BGD para-
meters can be found in Montenbruck and Hauschild (2013).
It should be noted that the satellite E20 (IOV_4) had a fail-
ure since mid-2014 and is only transmitting the E1 signal
since then. The performance of E20 is not included for that
period.
Time series of Galileo C1XC5X, C1XC7X, and C1XC8X
products of DLR are shown in Fig. 17. Several gaps are
noted during the time span, which can be attributed to the
data discontinuity of the tracking stations. Obvious jumps in
the DCB time series of satellites E19 and E20 can be found
for the first quarter of 2013; however, all DCBs of the four
Galileo IOV satellites appear to be quite stable since then.
As shown in the plot, most of the observed DCBs are con-
Fig. 17 Time series of Galileo
C1XC5X, C1XC7X, and
C1XC8X DCBs during the
period 2013–2014. The results
have been normalized by a
zero-mean constraint for the
satellites E11, E12, and E19
225
fined to a range of ±5 ns, which is obviously smaller than the
range of B1–B2 and B1–B3 code biases encountered in Bei-
Dou satellites. Furthermore, differences between C1XC5X,
C1XC7X, and C1XC8X DCBs of the individual satellite are
less than 0.5 ns.
Bias and STD of the estimated Galileo satellite DCBs
relative to that of DLR during the period 2013–2014 are
shown in Fig. 18. For each individual satellite, the mean
difference of both the IGG-DLR and BGD-DLR bias differ-
ences is almost zero, but the STD of broadcast BGD is much
larger than the estimates of IGG, in particular for satellite
E20. This result indicates that the DCB estimates of IGG are
more stable than the broadcast BGD parameters, which may
be attributed to the notably smaller network of the current
Galileo sensor stations as well as different processing strate-
gies between IGG and the Galileo control segment (Lucas
Rodriguez 2013). The STD of satellite E20 is significantly
larger than those of other satellites for both broadcast BGDs
and DCB estimates of IGG. While a larger variation of the
onboard group delays might be suspected for this satellite
in view of the later E5 transmission failure, it is presently
unclear why the three DCB estimation methods (IGG, DLR,
and Galileo control segment) would respond different to such
variations.
The consistency of the Galileo BGD parameters with post-
processed MGEX DCB products is higher than that of BDS
broadcast TGDs (see Figs. 14 and 18). As shown in Galileo
123
226
Fig. 18 IGG-DLR and
BGD-DLR bias differences
during the period 2013–2014.
Dots and bars indicate the mean
values and the standard
deviations of the daily bias
differences, respectively
broadcast ephemeris, the BGD parameters are updated with
a time interval of one day, which is more frequent than that of
BDS TGDs. Furthermore, the 12 Galileo sensor stations are
geographically distributed on a global scale, while the con-
tributing stations of BDS are almost limited in the mainland
and nearby regions of China. This implies that the number
of tracking stations and their distributions would affect the
accuracy and stability of satellite DCB estimates. Overall, it
can be concluded that the precision of Galileo satellite DCB
estimates of IGG is at the level of 0.23 ns, and a mean preci-
sion of 0.55 ns is also achieved by broadcast BGDs compared
with DLR solutions (Table 4).
5 Conclusions and future work
In this study, the IGGDCB approach is extended to esti-
mate the DCB in multi-GNSS satellites based on the MGEX
network. The satellite-plus-receiver DCB is individually
determined by local GTS-based ionospheric TEC model
instead of global ionospheric modeling or using predeter-
mined TEC maps to mitigate the LOS ionospheric delay.
Therefore, the local GTS ionospheric model, which is inde-
pendently applied for each individual station, may efficiently
capture the subtle variations in the ionospheric TEC and also
avoid the requirement for a large number of globally distrib-
uted tracking stations if only a few ground tracking sites are
available.
The DCB products of CODE and DLR are used to validate
the performance of the IGGDCB-based DCB estimates over
a 24-month period from 2013 to 2014. The validation results
show that (1) the intra-frequency bias estimates of IGG show
the same precision as that of DLR (about 0.1 ns for GPS
and 0.2–0.4 ns for GLONASS relative to the CODE’s direct
bias products, respectively); (2) the precision of GPS and
123
N. Wang et al.
GLONASS DCBs is approximately 0.2–0.3 and 0.5–0.8 ns
for the estimates of IGG and DLR relative to the products of
CODE; (3) the precision of BDS and Galileo DCB estimates
of IGG is 0.36 and 0.24 ns compared to the products of DLR;
and (4) the monthly stability indices of the IGGDCB-based
biases are approximately 0.11, 0.18, 0.17, and 0.14 ns for
the DCB estimates of GPS, GLONASS, BDS, and Galileo,
respectively.
Since mid October 2015, we start to contribute this multi-
GNSS DCB product to the MGEX, which is now made
available at the IGS CDDIS (ftp://cddis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/
gps/products/mgex/dcb) and IGN (ftp://igs.ign.fr/pub/igs/
products/mgex/dcb) repositories, as well as our own ftp
archive (ftp://ftp.gipp.org.cn/).
Despite the highly promising results, various issues will
deserve attention to further improve the IGGDCB method.
These include the direct estimation of DCB correction for all
possible signals pairs, which is expected to better represent
GNSS pseudorange observations than chaining of multiple
DCB (Montenbruck and Hauschild 2013). Concerning BDS,
further investigation will be required to understand and miti-
gate the different performance of bias estimates for GEO and
MEO satellites as opposed to the IGSO satellites. Finally,
it shall be examined, whether a more accurate and reliable
satellite DCB solution can be obtained by selecting tracking
stations in mid-latitudes rather than low latitudes on the basis
of the accuracy of the local ionospheric modeling.
Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to the editor-in-chief
(Roland Klees), the associate editor (Pascal Willis) and the three
anonymous reviewers for the editorial feedback and valuable sugges-
tions. We would like to acknowledge the IGS Multi-GNSS Experiment
(MGEX), International GNSS Monitoring and Assessment System
(iGMAS), Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) and Ger-
man Aerospace Center (DLR) for providing access to GNSS data and
differential code bias (DCB) products. We also acknowledge Dr. Ying
Li for helping to revise this paper, Bruno Garayt and Carey Noll for
Determination of differential code biases with multi-GNSS observations
coordinating and helping with the delivery of our MGEX DCB prod-
ucts to the IGS IGN and CDDIS ftp archive, and the funding supports
by National 973 (No. 2012CB825604), China Natural Science Funds
(No. 41231064, 41304034, 41104012 and 41621063), Beijing Nat-
ural Science Foundation (No. 4144094), the CAS/SAFEA International
Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams (KZZD-EW-TZ-05)
and the State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth’s Dynamics (Insti-
tute of Geodesy and Geophysics, CAS) (SKLGED2014-3-1-E).
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