Antenna Rotation and its Effects on Kinematic Precise Point Positioning

Abstract

In an attempt to clearly understand the impacts of antenna rotation on the performance of kinematic precise point positioning (PPP), this paper examines how unmodelled receiver antenna carrier-phase wind-up and antenna phase-centre variations (PCV) could propagate in PPP solutions. The major concern with antenna rotation and PPP lies in the definition of the functional model. While receiver wind-up affects only carrier-phase measurements, both phase and code observables are typically used to estimate a single clock parameter which creates an inconsistency in the model. To solve this issue, a decoupled-clock model is reviewed and its usefulness is proven by showing that it could potentially avoid metre-level biases in the code residuals. A link is also made between the mis-orientation of an antenna and the propagation of PCV errors in the positioning domain. It is shown that, depending on the antenna model used, centimetre-level errors could potentially contaminate the estimated coordinates.