Single-frequency L5 attitude determination from IRNSS/NavIC and GPS

Abstract

The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) has recently (May 2016) reached its full operational capability. In this contribution, we provide the very first L5 attitude determination analyses of the fully operational IRNSS as a standalone system and also in combination with the fully operational GPS Block IIF along with the corresponding ambiguity resolution results. Our analyses are carried out for both a linear array of two antennas and a planar array of three antennas at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. We study the noise characteristics (carrier-to-noise density, measurement precision, time correlation), the integer ambiguity resolution performance (LAMBDA, MC-LAMBDA) and the attitude determination performance (ambiguity float and ambiguity fixed). A prerequisite for precise and fast IRNSS attitude determination is the successful resolution of the double-differenced integer carrier-phase ambiguities. In this contribution, we will compare the performance of the unconstrained and the multivariate-constrained LAMBDA method. It is therefore also shown what improvements are achieved when the known body geometry of the antenna array is rigorously incorporated into the ambiguity objective function. As our ambiguity-fixed outcomes show consistency between empirical and formal results, we also formally assess the precise attitude determination performance for several locations within the IRNSS service area.