Global navigation satellite system ambiguity resolution with constraints from normal equations

Abstract

Carrier phase ambiguity resolution is the key to precise positioning with a global navigation satellite system (GNSS); therefore, quite a few ambiguity resolution methods have been developed in the past two decades. In this paper, a new ambiguity searching algorithm by treating part of normal equations as constraints is developed. The process starts with the truncation of the terms with respect to the small eigenvalues from the normal equations of a least-squares estimation problem. The remaining normal equations are employed as the constraint equations for the efficient searching of integer ambiguities. In the case of short single baseline rapid GNSS positioning with double differenced phase measurements, there are only three real parameters of the position to be estimated. Therefore three terms of the normal equations should be truncated off due to the fact that there is a large difference between the last three eigenvalues of the normal matrix of the float solution and the others, and then the remainin...