Regional multi-station real-time time transfer using an undifferenced multi-GNSS network solution

Real-time time transfer is the basis for the time synchronization and establishment and maintenance of time scales. In this contribution, we present a regional multi-station real-time time transfer approach, in which observations from multi-global navigation satellite system (GNSS) received at regional multi-station are integrated to conduct an undifferenced network solution. Consequently, the simultaneous estimation of receiver clock offsets for multiple stations becomes possible, enabling the execution of real-time time transfer. One week of observation data from five multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations located in Europe are selected to generate four links (distances from 919.7 to 2153.4 km), and four schemes are designed, i.e., GPS-only, BDS-3-only, Galileo-only, and GPS/BDS-3/Galileo (GCE) solutions, respectively. Experiment results show that the mean number of observations, time dilution of precision (TDOP) values, and standard deviation (STD) of clock offset difference time series between the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) and the estimated solutions for four time links are 90, 76, 72, 239 and 0.34, 0.38, 0.39, 0.21 and 0.039, 0.050, 0.043, 0.036 ns for GPS-only, BDS-3-only, Galileo-only, and GCE solutions, respectively. When the averaging time is shorter than 7680 s, the frequency stability of GCE solutions shows the best performance. The mean frequency stability of four time links at 7680 s is 6.59 × 10–15,7.25 × 10–15, 6.88 × 10–15 and 5.96 × 10–15 for GPS-only, BDS-3-only, Galileo-only, and GCE solutions, respectively. The GCE solution shows the best performance among the four schemes in terms of the number of observations, TDOP, STD, and frequency stability. The experiment results demonstrate that this approach is suitable for regional multi-station real-time time transfer.