Study on the stochastic model for VRS network-based GNSS positioning
T. Jongrujinan, C. Satirapod
Department of Survey Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
(Thanate.j@student.chula.ac.th, Chalermchon.s@chula.ac.th )
Abstract
Network-based positioning has currently become
the main precise GNSS surveying technique especially
for a medium-range baseline (approximately 20-100
km.). The key concept of this approach is to use the
observations of multiple reference stations to
generate the network correction for mitigating the
distance-dependent error including atmospheric
effects and orbital uncertainty at the user’s location.
Numerous GNSS data processing strategies have been
adopted in the functional model in order to improve
both the success of ambiguity resolution and the
accuracy positioning results. However it is impossible
to completely model the aforementioned errors. As a
result, the unmodelled residuals still remain in the
observations when the least squares estimation is
employed. An alternative approach to deal with these
residuals is to construct the realistic stochastic model
that GNSS observations are assumed to be
homoscedastic.
This research aims to investigate stochastic models
used for VRS technique in the rapid static mode. The
rigorous statistical method, MINQUE has been
applied to estimate the variance-covariance matrix of
the double-difference observations for VRS–rover
baseline determination. The findings of the
investigations indicated that the MINQUE stochastic
model could enhance 14 percent better in the vertical
accuracy but produce comparable result in horizontal
accuracy compared to the model that use equal weight
for all observation.
Keywords: VRS, Stochastic model.
1. Introduction
For centimeters accuracy level, network–based
positioning provides a solution the can overcome the
constraint of the single-based positioning that the
distance between the reference station and the rover
receiver is typically not exceed 10 km due to the
presence of atmospheric biases and orbit errors. [1]
confirmed that the ionospheric error is the main error
source which degrades the network-based positioning
performance in Thailand The functional model to
generate network corrections is carried out in two
major steps. Integer ambiguities between reference
stations must be first correctly resolved in real-time
despite the fact that the reference stations are many
tens of kilometers apart. The main challenge is to keep
on fixing ambiguities during situations when there is
a long data gap, or when a new satellite rises [2].
Secondly, the distance-dependent errors at reference
stations are precisely modelled and interpolated to a
rover location within network coverage. Several
interpolation methods have been proposed and
compared in detail [3]
Although the significant distance-dependent
errors can be modelled and mitigated in
aforementioned functional models, some unmodelled
biases may be present. Beside the adequate functional
model, In order to obtain optimal estimates from the
least-square solution, the stochastic model play an
important role. The stochastic model represents the
statistical characteristics of the observations in the
form of the variance-covariance matrix. On the other
hand, the functional model described the relationship
and unknown estimates. The VCV matrix should be
correctly defined. The standard approach to construct
the VCV matrix is based on the variance-covariance
propagation law. For simplicity, it is usually assumed
that all GNSS observations have the same variance,
and they are statistically independent. In fact, these
assumptions are not realistic, the GNSS observables
may change with different observation conditions
such as satellite elevation. Moreover in case of VRS
technique, to do the baseline processing of the rover
observables relative to the VRS observables, the
precision of the VRS observables should follow from
propagating the uncertainty of both network error
modelling and the interpolate method which form the
VRS observables.
In this paper, the MINQUE procedure is utilized
for VRS technique in the rapid static mode. This
procedure determines the VCV matrix by using the
least squares residuals as the quality indicators. Test
results will be presented to evaluate the performance
of the method.
2. VRS technique
The core of network-based positioning system is to
use multiple reference stations in order to interpolate
the distance-dependent errors for specific rovers
operating in the network coverage area as well as
transmit the correction information to rovers.
Currently, there exists no standardized data format for
broadcasting of network correction parameter and
also no agreement in parameterization of correction
model. There are several implementations of
distributing correction that system could provide,
however the virtual reference station (VRS) is the
most commonly used method. It is based on the
transmission of VRS observables of “virtual reference
station”. The VRS is a non-existent GNSS reference
station at the approximation rover’s location, however,
VRS observables is computed from real GNSS
observables of reference stations resemble to the
distance-dependent error corrections. Meanwhile, the
whole computations to generate VRS are operated by
server side, the rovers just treat or process the received
VRS as the same as that of single base station. This
may save the cost for upgrade any software and
receiver. In order to generate the VRS, the following
server- side process are required
1. Network ambiguity: the purpose of this step is to
resolve the integer ambiguities for the individual
baselines among the reference stations.
2. Error Interpolation: The residual vectors from
step 1 are used to be inputs for interpolating the
distance-dependent error at the approximate rover
coordinate
3. VRS observables generation: VRS observables
is generated based on the interpolated errors and
reference station observables
3. Stochastic model
After the generated VRS observables is
transmitted to the rover receiver via a communication
link, then the rest of the processes on the rover side
are the same as single-based positioning. The double
differenced (DD) carrier phase observations are
widely used to formulate the functional model of least
square since it efficiently eliminated most of
systematic errors. The DD equation can be written as:
∅ =ρ + N −I
, , , ,
, , , ,
where
u and v denote the rover station and virtual
reference station respectively; i and j denote the
tracked satellites ; ∅ , denote the DD observable;
, g1θ1+g2θ2+…+ gkθk is the quadratic function.
ρ ,, denote the DD geometric distance; N , denote
,
the DD ambiguity ; I ,
,
,
denote the DD of
ionospheric errors, T , denote the DD of tropospheric
, where Tr{} is the trace operator of a matrix; the
errors, , O , denote the DD of orbital error.
,
It is noted that that the VRS station and the rover
station are very close to each other. The DD of the
distance –dependent errors will be very small and can
be ignored.
The functional model, DD, still remain the
unmodelled systematic error and observation noise
due to insufficient knowledge about the physical
phenomena of error sources. Therefore, high accuracy
results using least squares adjustment also requires the
reasonable selection of the stochastic model
MINQUE (Minimum Norn Quadratic Unbiased
Estimation) is one of the rigorous statistical method
for estimating VCV components that all elements in
the VCV matrix will be directly estimated as the
unknown parameter in the least square solution
similar to the parameters in the functional model. The
basis of this variance component estimation is to use
the least squares residuals to formulate the realistic
VCV matrix (all GNSS observables are statistically
dependent and have different variances). It is assumed
that these residual series could adequately reflect the
presence of the residual biases and measurement noise
due to the imperfect functional model if redundant
observations are available.
Previous research [4] has efficiently used this
procedure for the single-based positioning in static
mode. Therefore it’s expected that MINQUE could
construct the appropriate stochastic model for the
network-based positioning in rapid static mode (about
15-20 epochs per session) if the observation period is
long enough to remove the most of systematic effects.
The MINQUE algorithm is expressed as below:
In the following Gauss-Markov model with n
measurements and t unknown;
l = Ax + v
For a session solution with t epochs of data, the
full VCV matrix of double differenced observations is
= P-1 = ∑ θT
C (1)
where l and v are n x 1 vectors of the measurements
A is the n x t design matrix; x is the t x 1 vector of the
unknown parameters; θ^1 ,θ^2 ,….,θ^k are the variance-
+ T + O
, , covariance components; T1, T2 ,…,Tk are the so-called
, ,
accompanying matrices ; P is the weight matrix of the
observations and C is the VCV matrix of the
observations. A minimum norm quadratic unbiased
θ ;
estimation of the linear function of
Tr {M.C.M.C}=min; MA=0
variance-covariance components can be estimated as
θ^ = (θ^1 ,θ^2 ,….,θ^k ) = S-1q (2)
where the matrix S = {Sij} with Sij = Tr{RTiRTj} (3)
and the vector q = {qi}
with qi = lTRTiRl (4)
and
 R = PQvP (5)
with Qv = P-1 – A(AtPA)-1AT being the adjusted
residual cofactor matrix.
R can be expressed by a partitioned matrix:
R11 ⋯ R1m
R= ⋮ ⋱ ⋮
Rm1 ⋯ Rmm
where m is the number of the observation epoch in a
session
Since the relationships between v and l are:
v = -QvPl (6)
and
PQvPv = -PQvPl = Pv (7)
According to Equation (5) and (6), Equation (3) can
be further written
qi = lTRTiRl = vTRTiRv = vTPTiPv (8)
It can be noticed from equation (2), (3), (8) that
elements of the VCV matrix are implicitly defined.
Therefore an iterative process must be performed to
solve the equation. Initially, the priori value of
variance-covariance components (θ0i ) could be given
by the standard method and the first-iteration
estimate (θ1i ) can be obtained by equation (2).
Subsequently, using the previous estimate (θ^j ) as the
priori value, the new estimate (θ^j+1 ) from the (j+1)
iteration is :
θ^j+1 = S-1(θ^j )q(θ^j ) ; j=1,2,…
This is called the iterated MINQUE. If θ^ converges,
the converging value of θ^ satisfy the following
condition :
S(θ^ ) θ^ = q(θ^ )
which can be further expressed as
Tr{R(θ^ )Ti} = lTR(θ^ ))TiR(θ^ )l
4. Experiment
Test data
The 3-hour GPS dataset collected from six CORS
stations of Thai organizations on February 15 2010,
during the period from 3:00 to 6:00 AM was used to
test the proposed procedure. It was sampled at a 30-
second rate and the cut-off elevation angle was set to
10 degree.
Figure 1: Location of CORS used for experiment
Establishment of reference coordinates
In order to obtain accurate reference coordinates of
all stations, 7-day GPS data (observed during
February 1-7, 2010) were processed using the Bernese
GPS Processing Software. A one-day solution was
obtained for each station, using a standard processing
baseline procedure. An International GNSS service
(IGS) station was selected as a fixed station and the
IGS final orbits were also introduced in the data
processing step. The weekly averaged coordinates of
an individual station were used as reference
coordinates for subsequent analysis.
Processing strategies
As shown in Figure 1, one reference station
(CUSV) was used as rover station and the other five
stations were simulated as network reference stations
to generate VRS in form of RINEX by the Trimble
Total Control software. Then both virtual rinex and
rover observables rinex was cut into segments. The
various segment size is from 14 epochs to 20 epochs.
Subsequently, each data segment was separately
processed. The baseline solution between VRS
observables and rover observables was obtained by a
Matlab-based CUGPS Baseline processing software.
First, Float solution is carried out by least square
adjustment with DD equation as the observation
equation. Meanwhile, the VCV matrix is determined
by the two stochastic model (1.MINQUE procedure,
2. Standard procedure). Secondly, the LAMBDA
method [5] will be used to determine the integer value
for the ambiguities. LAMBDA takes the estimated
float solution together with VCV matrix as input, and
deliver the estimated integer ambiguities. Finally, the
fix solution is computed.
5. Analysis of results observables
After all data segments (140 sessions) were
processed, the coordinate results were compared with
the reference coordinates. The performance of the
VRS technique under the MINQUE stochastic model
is evaluated by Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). The
Equal-weight stochastic model (Standard method) is
used as the comparison benchmark as shown in
Table1. As the results, MINQUE tend to produce
slightly better value in Horizontal RMSE whereas the
significant better vertical accuracy was achieved of
approximately 14 percent compared to equal-weight
model. In addition, their standard deviations of Figure 3: W-ratio
baseline component is comparable as shown in Table2
6. Conclusion remarks
Number H RMSE (cm.) V RMSE (cm.)
Epoch MQ EQW MQ EQW In this paper, the MINQUE procedure has been
14 1.7 1.8 3.3 3.6 tested for VRS technique. The finding show that the
15 1.7 1.7 3.0 3.5 MINQUE procedure can improve the positioning
16 1.6 1.6 2.9 3.5 accuracy and reliability of ambiguity resolution.
17 1.6 1.6 3.0 3.7 Further tests should be carried out with some other
18 1.6 1.6 3.0 3.7 datasets to confirm the conclusion.
19 1.6 1.7 3.1 3.5
20 1.6 1.6 3.1 3.5
References
Table1: RMSE results for each stochastic model.
[1] Charoenkalunyuta, T., Satirapod, C., Li Y. and
.From Figure 2 and 3 it is obvious that the Rizos, C. 2012. An investigation of the effect of
ambiguity validation statistic, both F-ratio [6] and W- Ionospheric models on the performance of Network –
ratio [7] obtained by MINQUE procedure, are based RTK GPS in Thailand. International Journal of
consistently larger than those of the standard Geoinformatics, 8(4), 61-66
procedure. This result suggest that the confidence in [2] Chen, H.Y., Rizos, C. and Han S., 2004. An
the ambiguity resolution is improved. instantaneous ambiguity resolution procedure suitable
for medium-scale GPS reference station networks
Number H SD. (cm.) V SD. (cm.) Survey Review, 37(291), 396-410
Epoch MQ EQW MQ EQW
[3] Al-Shaery, A., Lim, S., Rizos, C., 2011
14 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.1 Investigation of Different Interpolation Models Used
15 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 in Network-RTK for the Virtual Reference Station
16 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 Technique, Journal of Global Positioning Systems,
17 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 Vol. 10, No.2, 136-148
18 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 [4] Satirapod, C., Wang, J. and Rizos, C. (2002) A
19 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 simplified MINQUE procedure for the estimation of
20 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 variance-covariance components of GPS observables.
Survey Review, 35(286), 582-590
Table2: S.D. results for each stochastic model. [5] De Jonge, P. and Tiberius C., 1995 The LAMBDA
method for integer ambiguity estimation:
implementation aspects. Publications of the Delft
Computing Centre, LGR-Series 12 (12), 1-47
[6] Euler, H. J., and Schaffrin, B., 1991 On the
measure for the discernibility between different
ambiguity solutions in static-kinematic GPS mode.
IAG Symposia no.107, Kinematic Systems in
Geodesy, Surveying and Remote Sensing, 285-295
[7] Wang, J. Stewart, P Tsakiri M. 1998 A
discrimination test procedure for ambiguity resolution
on-the-fly Journal of Geodesy 72, 644-653

Figure 2: F-ratio