Visualization of GNSS multipath effects and its potential application in IGS data processing

A modified multipath error mitigation method using the multi-point hemispherical grid model (MHGM) is proposed, and the influence of changes in the observation environments of IGS stations on their data quality is evaluated. The multipath error models of different satellite pairs for different observation periods can be established using the integrated multi-GNSS data in the proposed method. The test under deliberate high multipath environment reveals that this method can effectively estimate the GNSS multipath error, detect and present the orientation of the interference sources around the station. The RMS of residuals and the kinematic positioning accuracy on day 237 of 2018 are improved by 68% and 61%, respectively. Compared with the empirical site model (ESM), which can also visualize the effects of the multipath, the RMS of residuals when applying the MHGM is improved by 20%. The test with IGS historical observations shows that MHGM can effectively reflect the influence of changing multipath interference around stations on carrier phase observations, with an average improvement of 25% in the RMS of carrier phase residuals in the extrapolated 9-day validations over the past 18 years. The results of a kinematic positioning experiment in 2019 generally coincide with the RMS statistic results of carrier phase residuals as well. The MHGM demonstrates distinct potential in the influence evaluation of changes for the multipath interference around the stations on their observation quality.