Extraction of line-of-sight ionospheric observables from GPS data using precise point positioning

Here we propose a method for extracting line-of-sight ionospheric observables from GPS data using precise point positioning (PPP). The PPP-derived ionospheric observables (PIOs) have identical form with their counterparts obtained from leveling the geometry-free GPS carrier-phase to code (leveling ionospheric observables, LIOs), and are affected by the satellite and receiver inter-frequency biases (IFBs). Based on the co-location experiments, the effects of extracting error arising from the observational noise and multipath on the PIOs and the LIOs are comparatively assessed, and the considerably reduced effects ranging from 70% to 75% on the PIOs with respect to the LIOs can be verified in our case. In addition, based on 26 consecutive days' GPS observations from two international GNSS service (IGS) sites (COCO, DAEJ) during disturbed ionosphere period, the extracted PIOs and LIOs are respectively used as the input of single-layer ionospheric model to retrieve daily satellite IFBs station-by-station. The minor extracting errors underlying the PIOs in contrast to the LIOs can also be proven by reducing day-to-day scatter and improving between-receiver consistency in the retrieved satellite IFBs values.