Article The Impact of Eclipsing GNSS Satellites on the Precise Point Positioning Xinyun Cao 1,2, Shoujian Zhang 1,*, Kaifa Kuang 1,2, Tianjun Liu 3 and Kang Gao 1,2 1 School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China;
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[email protected] (K.G.) 2 Key Laboratory of Geophysical geodesy, National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China 3 School of Environment and Spatial Informatics, China University of Mining and Technology, 1 Daxue Road, Xuzhou 221116, China;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +86-13437272488 Received: 20 December 2017; Accepted: 10 January 2018; Published: 11 January 2018 Abstract: When satellites enter into the noon maneuver or the shadow crossing regimes, the actual attitudes will depart from their nominal values. If improper attitude models are used, the induced- errors due to the wind-up effect and satellite antenna PCO (Phase Center Offset) will deteriorate the positioning accuracy. Because different generations of satellites adopt different attitude control models, the influences on the positioning performances deserve further study. Consequently, the impact of three eclipsing strategies on the single-system and multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) Precise Point Positioning (PPP) are analyzed. According to the results of the eclipsing monitor, 65 globally distributed MGEX (Multi-GNSS EXperiment) stations for 31-day period in July 2017 are selected to perform G/R/E/C/GR/GREC PPP in both static and kinematic modes. The results show that the influences of non-nominal attitudes are related to the magnitude of the PCO values, maximum yaw angle differences, the duration of maneuver, the value of the sun angle and the satellite geometric strength.