The Model of Radio Two-way Time Comparison between Satellite and Station and Experimental Analysis☆

Abstract Time synchronization between satellite and station is the key technique of satellite navigation system and the foundation of realization of satellite navigation and positioning. Aiming at solving the problems of time synchronization, we have discussed a new method of radio two-way time comparison between satellite and station, deduced in detail the reduction model of up- and down-link pseudo ranges between satellite and station, and provided a practical calculation model of clock error between satellite and station. By calculating the differences between up- and down-link pseudo ranges, this method has eliminated the influences of common errors, such as the tropospheric delay, satellite ephemeris errors, ground station coordinates errors and so on. The ionospheric delay relevant to signal frequency is also weakened largely, thus this improves the accuracy of time comparison greatly. Finally, experimental analysis is conducted by using observational data, and the results show that the accuracy of radio two-way time comparison between satellite and station can attain about 0.34 ns, which validates the correctness of theoretical method and model.