Analysis of long-range network RTK during a severe ionospheric storm

The network-based GPS technique provides a broad spectrum of corrections to support RTK (real-time kinematic) surveying and geodetic applications. The most important among them are the ionospheric corrections generated in the reference network. The accuracy of these corrections depends upon the ionospheric conditions and may not always be sufficient to support ambiguity resolution (AR), and hence accurate GPS positioning. This paper presents the analyses of the network-derived ionospheric correction accuracy under extremely varying – quiet and stormy – geomagnetic and ionospheric conditions. In addition, the influence of the correction accuracy on the instantaneous (single-epoch) and on-the-fly (OTF) AR in long-range RTK GPS positioning is investigated, and the results, based on post-processed GPS data, are provided. The network used here to generate the ionospheric corrections consists of three permanent stations selected from the Ohio Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) network. The average separation between the reference stations was ∼200 km and the test baseline was 121 km long. The results show that, during the severe ionospheric storm, the correction accuracy deteriorates to the point when the instantaneous AR is no longer possible, and the OTF AR requires much more time to fix the integers. The analyses presented here also outline the importance of the correct selection of the stochastic constraints in the rover solution applied to the network-derived ionospheric corrections.