Variances of GPS Phase Observations: The SIGMA-ɛ Model

Abstract

The noise term of GPS phase data can be calculated from the measured carrier-to-noise power density ratios (C/N0). The C/N0 values are used in the proposed SIGMA-ɛ model to calculate the variance matrix of double-differenced GPS phase data. Examples show the capability of this model to yield higher accuracies for GPS surveys than the use of the standard weighting scheme. Most importantly, the SIGMA-ɛ model allows the use of noisier phase data from very low elevation satellites to overcome poor satellite geometry problems. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.