A Statistical Test Procedure for the Detection and Identification of GPS Systematic Errors

GPS systematic errors, such as multipath, ionospheric and tropospheric errors (or residual ionospheric and tropospheric errors after correction using some techniques) are the main error sources for high precision positioning applications. Efficient detection, identification and mitigation of systematic errors is the key to successful and reliable resolution of ambiguities and estimation of site coordinates.In this paper, an automatic test procedure, comprising detection and identification of GPS systematic errors is developed. Firstly, the Durbin-Watson test procedure is extended for the detection of GPS systematic errors. An approximate method to calculate the percentage points of the lower and upper bounds of the test statistic is then given for the identification of GPS systematic errors after significant systematic errors have been detected. Two GPS data sets are used to demonstrate the potential of this automatic test procedure.