Calculating new satellite position given pseudorange measurements

Question

I'm looking for a reference/text for an explicit formula to calculate a satellite position given pseudorange measurements from later epoch times. I've seen a lot of matlab code on the internet but I was hoping to have these formulas laid out nicely.

Can anyone point me to the right direction?

Answer 1

Algebraic solutions are not very common for GPS, however, several do exist. The most well-known one is probably Bancroft's. Others are Abel's and Kleusberg's.

Answer 2

If you look for some libraries and test environment in c++ or python you could have a look at the piksi swift software tools. It is open source (LGPL) and the code is well documented in terms of function description + literature sources.

The source code documentation of the function gnss_analysis/solution.py/singe_point_position addresses the literature Kaplan, E.. Understanding GPS - Principles and applications. 2nd edition Section 2.4.2 for example and implements the procedure.

def single_point_position(obs, max_iterations=15, tol=1e-4):
  """
  Computes the single point position by iteratively solving linearized
  least squares solutions

  Parameters
  ----------
  obs : pd.DataFrame
      A DataFrame that holds `pseudorange` observations (corrected for satellite
    clock errors), satellite position (`sat_x`, `sat_y`, `sat_z`) all in ECEF
    coordinates at the time of transmission and `tow` variable which corresponds
    to the time of arrival.
      All observations are assumed to have been propagated to a common time of
    arrival.
  max_iterations : int (optional)
      The maximum number of iterations, defaults to 15.
  tol : float (optional)
      Tolerance for convergence (same is used for both position and time),
      defaults to 1e-4.
  Returns
  --------
  spp : dict
    A dictionary holding the single point position.  Keys included:
      pos_ecef : a length three array representing the position in ECEF coords.
      time : the gps system time at the solution
      clock_offset : the receiver clock error
      converged : a boolean indicating convergence.

  Reference:
    Kaplan, E.. Understanding GPS - Principles and applications. 2nd edition Section 2.4.2
  """
  ....