Real-Time Multi-GNSS Precise Point Positioning with Instant Convergence for Inland Waterway Navigation

Abstract

Precise Point Positioning (PPP) has been highly recommended to be used in the future for precise navigation, and is very suitable for the inland waterway navigation. PPP has great advantages than RTK except for a relatively long convergence time of several minutes or even more than ten minutes without using atmospheric corrections. With the goal of achieving PPP accuracy at centimeters level in horizontal instantly, and supporting by the State Space Representation (SSR) corrections we developed a real time PPP algorithm by fully utilizing GPS and Galileo observations. A measurement campaign was conducted to validate the PPP performance for inland waterway navigation, especially the PPP convergence time and performance when passing a waterway lock or bridges. Finally, the PPP accuracy could be less than 10 cm in horizontal within several seconds or even at the first epoch when the GNSS satellites are evenly distributed in an open sky area. In addition, it can also achieve a fast reinitialization within several seconds after the vessel passing over a waterway lock or a bridge.