Relative positioning calibration method of phase center offsets of GPS signal antennas

Abstract

Phase center offset (PCO) of GPS antenna has a considerable influence on the precision and accuracy of the resulting coordinates. As joint observation mode of various GPS receivers and antennas becomes increasingly universal, efficient determination of PCO values of multi-type dual-frequency GPS receiver antennas at the same time needs to be addressed urgently. According to the property of antenna PCO, a relative positioning calibration method, which is based on GPS relative positioning survey theory, is proposed. This method only needs two steps, each being a simultaneous observation of one consecutive sidereal day for the reference antenna and the calibrated antenna. Experimental results for several widely used GPS antennas show that this method greatly improves the calibration efficiency and can estimate horizontal PCOs for both frequencies. The proposed method can be fully applied to synchronously assess PCOs of multi-type dual-frequency GPS antennas in high precision position.