Disseminating regional ionospheric corrections from GNSS constellations and application to Galileo high accuracy service
摘要
Precise Point Positioning (PPP) services offered by GNSS, such as the Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS), expect to provide regional ionospheric corrections over a certain area. Providing timely and precise ionospheric corrections poses a challenge, given that the ionospheric correction message occupies a large portion of the bandwidth, but it needs to be transmitted only by the subset of satellites visible in the region of interest. This paper looks at strategies for bandwidth allocation between global and regional messages. A simple algorithm based on three parameters is evaluated. These parameters are the minimum elevation at which the satellite is considered visible in the region, the minimum fixed bandwidth, and an elevation-dependent bandwidth ratio. The method is particularized for Galileo HAS messages MT1 (satellite corrections) and MT2 (ionospheric corrections) for the European Coverage Area (ECA). The Time To Retrieve Data (TTRD) for users both inside and outside the ECA is analyzed with different parameter combinations and assumptions. The results show TTRDs far below 30 s (95%) for configurations with 20 HAS-transmitting satellites, and close to 30 s (95%) for configurations with 16 HAS-transmitting satellites. Giving the high flexibility and low complexity of the algorithm, it may be considered for further study and implementation by Galileo HAS or any GNSS transmitting a regional message.