Schreiber approach for GPS carrier phase ambiguity resolution

Differenced GPS carrier phase observations are usually used in GPS positioning to eliminate the various common GPS errors. A different approach is proposed in this paper where no differencing of the observations is required. In this method, the common GPS errors are modelled explicitly and eliminated by introducing the Schreiber method, which is used in traditional geodesy to eliminate the azimuth unknowns in observation equations. The paper first introduces the Schreiber method, and then discusses its application to the various GPS common-mode error models. It is shown that if only the real ambiguity solution is concerned, the estimate of the position parameters from the Schreiber approach is the same as that from the differencing approach. However, the variance of the ambiguity estimate from the Schreiber approach is smaller than that from the differencing approach. Numerical examples are given to show that the results are reliable.