Impact of sampling interval on variance components of epoch-wise residual error in relative GPS positioning: A case study of a 40-km-long baseline

Abstract

The study presents sampling interval impacts on variance components of the epoch-wise residual errors in relative GPS positioning. In the variance components estimation process, the 2-way nested ANOVA method was used. For that purpose, GPS observation data during four months at two permanent GPS stations, establishing a 40-km-long baseline as a part of the Montenegrin permanent network (MontePos), were used. The study results showed that there is no statistically significant impact of sampling interval changes on epoch-wise variance components related to the residual tropospheric and ionospheric delays (effect α) when it comes to such a baseline. However, it is not the case with epoch-wise variance components related to the interstation-distance-independent residual ‘far-field’ multipath effect (effect β). It turned out that the absolute values of relative differences of standard deviations of the effect α on the relative GPS coordinates (e, n and u) had maximum values 11.1%, 10.2% and 8.9%, respectively. Keeping the same order of presentation for the effect β, the values of 5.9%, 9.9% and 12.5% were obtained. In addition, absolute values of relative differences of standard deviations of horizontal and vertical position had maximum values of 3.8% and 7.7%, respectively.

Keywords

• Relative GPS positioning
• Residual effects
• Variance components
• Positional accuracy
• Sampling interval