A novel method of ambiguity resolution and cycle slip processing for single-frequency GNSS/INS tightly coupled integration system

Abstract The integrated navigation of single-frequency global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and inertial navigation system (INS) has broad application prospects with the development of multi-constellation GNSS. However, GNSS signals are susceptible to interference from a complex environment, which results in low-quality observations. The combination of frequencies cannot be applied for a single-frequency signal, so it is difficult to fix the ambiguity and process cycle slip. Therefore, the method of ambiguity resolution and cycle slip processing with INS aiding is proposed in this paper. When full ambiguities cannot be completely fixed, a subset of ambiguity is determined based on the elevation angle and posteriori residuals. The satellite is firstly eliminated one by one if the absolute value of posteriori residual is over the set threshold. And if the ambiguities still cannot be fixed, the satellite with the minimum elevation angle is eliminated each one. The short-term and high-accuracy position predicted by the INS was used as the constraint equation of the cycle slip detection. The unit weight mean square error of the cycle slip detection equation was used to identify the epoch where the cycle slip occurs, and the residual calculated by robust estimation was used to detect and repair the cycle slip. A set of data collected by a vehicle was used to analyze the proposed method. The experimental results showed that the proposed partial ambiguity resolution can obtain the optimal ambiguity fixing rate and positioning performance compared with the full ambiguity resolution and partial ambiguity resolution based on the elevation angle. The proposed algorithm can effectively detect and accurately repair the cycle slip for the simulated small and large cycle slips, and the cycle slips can still be detected when the global positioning system (GPS), global navigation satellite system of Russia (GLONASS), and BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) were outage for 10 s, 5 s, and 10 s without sufficient visible satellites.