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Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945
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DCB estimation and analysis using the single receiver

GPS/GLONASS observations under various seasons and
geomagnetic activities
Ahmed Wageeh a, Mohamed Doma a,b, Ahmed Sedeek c, Alaa Elghazouly a,⇑
a
Faculty of Engineering, Menoufia University, Egypt
b
Pyramids Higher Institute for Engineering and Technology, Egypt
c
Faculty of Petroleum and Mining Engineering, Suez University, Egypt

Received 16 January 2023; received in revised form 22 July 2023; accepted 28 July 2023
Available online 3 August 2023

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have many applications in surveying, geodesy, and everyday life, so the accuracy of
observations is very important. To have accurate results, many errors should be corrected, including ionospheric errors. Estimating
the Differential Code Bias (DCB) and Total Electron Content (TEC) is essential to reduce ionospheric errors. This study’s main aim
is to determine how the combination of GPS (Global Positioning System) and GLONASS (GLObal NAvigation Satellite System) obser-
vations affect the estimation of DCB of satellites (SDCB) and receivers (RDCB) under the effects of geomagnetic storms and seasonal
changes. The MATLAB-based software GR_DCB (GPS and GLONASS DCB estimation) was developed to estimate the SDCB and
RDCB based on GPS and GLONASS observations. The results were tested using data from the International GNSS Service (IGS) net-
work from nine stations and compared to previous studies to assess the effectiveness of the developed code. The findings are consistent
with IGS products and more precise than previous studies that relied solely on GPS observations. An analysis of the effects of the geo-
magnetic storm on DCB variance is considered for June 22–23, 2015. During the geomagnetic storm, all GPS and GLONASS stations
exhibited a fall in RDCB, led by a modest increase in some stations. The SDCB had no observed change on storm days compared with
quiet days. The seasonal change affected GPS and GLONASS stations RDCB. Winter, which has the highest RDCB mean values, is also
the season when a deviation in RDCB is the greatest. Autumn and Summer had the lowest dispersion in RDCB over the season and the
lowest RDCB values.
Ó 2023 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: GNSS; GPS; GLONASS; Ionosphere; DCB; Single Receiver

1. Introduction
The increase in GNSS reference stations receiving sig-
nals from GLONASS has made it necessary to include
GLONASS observations and GPS in studying the iono-
sphere. The more observations grow, the more accurate
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: alaa_elghazouly@sh-eng.menofia.edu.eg (A. Elgha-
zouly).
the results become. The ionosphere affects any device that
uses navigation signals, including GNSS. The ionosphere
is the main contributor to signal propagation error when
a signal is being transmitted from a satellite to a ground
receiver. Dual-frequency GNSS receivers can calculate
ionospheric delays by carrier phases and pseudo-range
observation for two frequencies (Jin et al., 2004).
While measuring the total ionospheric delay, a satellite
and receiver-dependent systematic error known as DCB
is found; the DCB is an inaccuracy in measuring the iono-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2023.07.063
0273-1177/Ó 2023 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A. Wageeh et al.
sphere TEC using GNSS dual-frequency pseudo-range
readings that can lead to non-physical TEC negative val-
ues. For illustration, in TEC estimation, one nanosecond
(ns) DCB results in 2.85 TEC unit (TECU) for GPS fre-
quencies and 2.92 TECU for GLONASS frequencies
(Mylnikova et al., 2015). DCB values vary between one
GNSS satellite to the other, and the ground receivers.
Yasyukevich et al. (2015) studied the DCB values for
SDCB and RDCB of GPS and GLONASS from 2000 to
2014 over 270 stations. It was noticed that the GPS SDCB
values change by
0.35 ns per year, while the SDCB dis-
crepancies for GLONASS are more significant, ranging
from 1.71 to 3.42 ns per year. The advantage of using
GLONASS in addition to GPS (besides adding more
observations that increase accuracy) is that GLONASS
satellites can effectively cover some areas that GPS satel-
lites cannot reach at a particular time (Choi et al., 2018).
GLONASS satellites have the largest orbit inclination
angle among all GNSS constellations (about 10 degrees lar-
ger than GPS), which is more helpful in covering high-
latitude areas (Fig. 1). GLONASS has an equivalent or
even better positioning accuracy than GPS in high latitudes
because of its greater orbit inclination angle, and using
both GPS and GLONASS results in the best accuracy for
coordinates (Zheng et al., 2022).
There are various methods for calculating the iono-
spheric delay, such as Otsuka et al. (2002) and Liu et al.
(2004). These studies modeled the ionosphere as a sphere
with an infinitesimally thin layer. It was assumed that the
TEC is uniform over small areas during specific time inter-
vals and that the DCB values of satellites and receivers
remain constant over a day. Jin et al. (2012) developed
MATLAB code (M_DCB) to calculate instrumental biases
using dual-frequency GPS observations with two options
of analysis: single-station and multi-station. However, the
software considered only Codeless Tracking receivers.
Sedeek et al. (2017) presented another MATLAB software
(ZDDCBE). ZDDCBE used weighted least-square to
reduce DCB estimation error. Choi et al. (2018) added
the GLONASS observations to GPS to calculate the
DCB values and TEC using nine South Korean stations.
On average, there was a 0.64 TECU difference between
GPS-only TEC and GPS + GLO TEC.
Fig. 1. Ground tracks of GPS satellites on the left and GLONASS satellites on the right on day 37 of year 2021 (Huang, 2022).
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Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945
One of the most significant ionosphere-affecting phe-
nomena is the geomagnetic storm. A significant distur-
bance of the Earth’s magnetosphere is caused by solar
wind and Heliospheric Magnetic Field (HMF) distur-
bances. In a geomagnetic storm, the high-charge electrons
will rise substantially. Furthermore, Geomagnetic-
Induced Currents (GIC) caused by geomagnetic field dis-
turbances will affect high-voltage Earth devices (Ansari
et al., 2018; Sedeek, 2022). The storm can lead to a high
increase in ionospheric error, reaching 265% compared
with quiet days (Sedeek, 2020). Li et al. (2021) studied
the storm on 28 May 2017 to better understand the factors
that affect DCB estimation during geomagnetic storms. It
was found that RDCB is affected by the ionospheric distur-
bance; during the storm, the standard deviation of the
RDCB abruptly rises, and it then returns to its previous
level after the storm has passed.
The SDCB values show slight variations over several
months (Choi et al., 2011) with day-to-day variations of
less than 0.2 ns. On the other hand, RDCB values have sig-
nificant variations, even within one-hour intervals, due to
many factors (Coco et al., 1991). According to Liu et al.
(2020), there is a notable association between the ambient
temperature and the long-term RDCB changes recom-
mending 15 degrees to have stable RDCB values. Coster
et al. (2013) investigated how the GPS receiver bias varies
with temperature, including indoor and outdoor tempera-
tures. They demonstrated that temperature-dependent bias
is evident and that this temperature dependence varies
from one receiver to another. Yasyukevich et al. (2015)
studied the DCB values variation of GPS and GLONASS
devices and the consequential TEC error from 2000 to 2014
over 270 stations to find that the systematic variation in
RDCB and considerable seasonal variations caused by
the environmental state (temperature and humidity).
In the current paper, more attention is considered to the
satellite’s and receiver’s DCB values of GPS and GLO-
NASS and the variation in DCB under different conditions.
The calculations are made using a weighted least square
algorithm developed on MATLAB and assessed using data
from IGS reference stations, and that will be discussed in
sections (2 & 3). The algorithm’s results are validated in
section (4). Section (5) shows the case studies of geomag-
A. Wageeh et al.
netic storm and the seasonal variation and their effect on
DCB values. Section (6) discusses the results and presents
the conclusions.
2. Mathematical model
Two types of waves can be received for any GNSS satel-
lite: pseudo-range and carrier phase. Carrier phase observa-
tions are more accurate as they have slight measurement
noise compared to pseudo-range observations, which have
significant noise (but unambiguous) measurements. Still,
the integer ambiguity in the carrier phase makes it ambigu-
ous. Merging the two types of observations is the key to
having the best results. The Receiver INdependent
EXchange (RINEX) file contains the observations from
GPS and GLONASS satellites for each station. These obser-
vations include, in addition to ionospheric delay, many
other types of errors, such as troposphere delay, instrumen-
tal clock errors, multipath errors, etc.
To estimate the ionospheric error accurately geometry-
free linear combination is used. Only ionospheric delays
are frequency dependent; thus, we can eliminate all other
errors (clock errors, troposphere delay, multipath errors,
etc.) using this combination given by (Sardón et al., 1994).
P4 ¼ Psr;1 ðiÞ  Psr;2 ðiÞ
¼ Is1  Is2 þ c  DCBr þ c  DCBs
L4 ¼ Lsr;1 ðiÞ  Lsr;2 ðiÞ
¼ Is2  Is1 þ kðN2  N1 Þ þ kðbr;2  bs;2 Þ  kðbr;1
 bs;1 Þ
With r, s, j, and i are the receiver, satellite, frequency,
and epoch indices, and where: Psr;j ðiÞ, Lsr;j ðiÞ Pseudo-range
and carrier-phase measurements, respectively, in meters,
Isj the ionospheric delay, in meters, Nj carrier-phase integer
ambiguities, in cycles, k carrier-phase wavelength, in
meters, bs,i, br,i satellite and receiver instrument biases
phase advance, respectively, in cycles, and DCBs ; DCBr
are the satellite and receiver differential code biases, respec-
tively, in time units.
The ionospheric spherical harmonic function is used to
calculate satellite and receiver DCBs for GPS and GLO-
NASS at any station from the smoothed P4 observations
following the technique described by Jin et al. (2012).
The resulting equation is given by:
X
N X
n The least squares approach is commonly used to solve
P mn sinðbÞðamn cosðmsÞ þ bmn sinðmsÞÞ
n¼0 m¼0
" #
f 21 f 22
¼ MpðzÞ  ðP 4;sm  c  DCB r  c  DCB s Þ
40:3ðf 21  f 22 Þ
  
R zero-mean reference are shown in the last two rows as
MpðzÞ ¼ cos arcsin sinðaz
RþH
Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945
Where: b is the geocentric latitude of IPPs, s ¼ kIPP  k0
is the sun-fixed longitude of the IPPs, kIPP ; k0 are the geo-
centric longitude of IPPs and the apparent.
Solar time, n is the degree of the spherical function, m is
the order of spherical harmonic function; fourth order is used,
P mn normalized Legendre polynomials, amn , bmn are the esti-
mated spherical harmonics coefficients, z is the satellite eleva-
tion angle, and Mp(z) is a mapping function to convert Slant
TEC (STEC) into Vertical TEC (VTEC) since STEC signifi-
cantly varies depending on a satellite elevation angle
(Klobuchar 1987; Mannucci et al. 1993), c is the speed of light
in vacuum = 299,792,458 m/s, f 1 and f 2 refer to frequencies
of the GNSS navigation signals. The frequencies are constant
for all satellites in the case of GPS signals, f 1 and f 2 are
1575.42 MHz and 1227.60 MHz, respectively. On the other
hand, GLONASS has a frequency division method to distin-
guish between individual satellites (Hoffmann-Wellenhof
et al., 2008). The two frequencies are determined to f 1 =
(1602 + 9/16 k) MHz and f 2 = (1246 + 7/16 k) MHz, respec-
tively, where k refers to the frequency channel number, which
can be checked in the satellite navigation file, P 4;sm is the
smoothed P4 by its corresponding carrier phase observation
L4 to reduce noise, R is the radius of the Earth = 6,378,137
m, H is the altitude of the ionosphere electrons
concentration = 506,700 m, and a is a correction fac-
tor = 0.9782. H and a values are evaluated as the Modified
Single Layer Model (MSLM) (Schaer, 1999), which is used
ð1Þ by most of the IAACs, e.g., CODE, ESA, and NRCan.
Equation (3) exhibits a rank deficiency since a bias com-
mon to all satellites cannot be distinguished from a corre-
sponding bias common to all receivers. Zero-mean
reference is added to separate the DCBs of satellites and
ð2Þ
receivers (Montenbruck et al., 2014).
Spherical harmonics provide a complete and orthogonal
basis on the entire surface of a sphere, but their basis func-
tions may not remain orthogonal in a limited local region,
which can affect the determination of the model’s coeffi-
cients. Moreover, the boundary conditions for spherical
harmonics may need to be adjusted for local regions, such
as those near the poles, to account for the sphere’s curva-
ture and ensure an accurate representation of the region.
To address these issues, various techniques have been pro-
posed to improve the accuracy of the computation of
the spherical harmonic coefficients in the local region
(Razin & Voosoghi, 2017). Our research aims to evaluate
the impact of GLONASS observation on GPS observa-
tion in estimating DCB. We compare our results with pre-
vious research that uses GPS only and use the same model.
the spherical harmonic function, as there are fewer vari-
ables than observations (Ma and Maruyama 2003; Jin
et al. 2008). The following equation illustrates the structure
ð3Þ
of the current algorithm’s unknown parameters, coefficient
matrix, and observation vector. The two conditions of
ð4Þ
the sum of all SDCB for the same constellation equals zero.
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A. Wageeh et al. Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945

2 3 2
DCBGr ðf þ dÞ
6 DCBR 7
6 r 7
x¼h i2 ð9Þ
2 3 6 7
F 0 F  0 0  0 Eðb; sÞ  Eðb; sÞ
6
6
7
7 0:05 þ sinðzÞ
0:02
2
6 . 6 G 7
6 . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7 7 6 DCBs1 7
6 7
6 . . . F . . . . . . . 7 6 .. 7
6 7 6 7
6F 0 0  F 0  0  Eðb; sÞ 7 6 . 7 Where X is the unknown parameters (variables) vector,
6 Eðb; sÞ 7 6
6 7 G 7
6 0 F  F   Eðb; sÞ 7 6 DCBs32 7 A is the coefficient matrix, L is the observation vector (val-
6
0 0 0 Eðb; sÞ
7 6 7
6 DCBR 7
6 .
6 .. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. 7 6 s1 7 ues of P 4;sm ), x is the weight matrix and f, d are two con-
6 . . . . 0 F 0 . . 7 7 6
6 ..
7
7
6 7 6 . 7 stants equal to 5 and 2 cm, respectively.
6 0 F 0  0 0  F Eðb; sÞ  Eðb; sÞ 7 6 7
6 7 6 DCBR 7
6 0    0 7 6 s24 7
4 0 1 1 0 0 0 5 6 7
6 I coef ð1Þ 7
0 0 0  0 1  1 0  0 6 7
6 .. 7 3. Software details
6 7
4 . 5
I coef ðkÞ
2 3 The GR_DCB software was developed in MATLAB.
P 4 ð1Þ
6 P 4 ð2Þ 7 The inputs for this software are shown in Fig. 2.
6 7
6 . 7 The study passes through three steps. The first step is to
6 . 7
6 . 7 show the value of adding GLONASS observations to GPS;
6 7
6 .. 7
6 . 7 A comparison is made between GR_DCB and two soft-
6 7
6 . 7
6 .. 7 ware that use single station analysis of GPS observations
6 7
6 . 7
6 ..
6
7
7
only: ZDDCBE and S_DCB. The comparison data
6 . 7 includes nine stations in mid-latitudes from 1 Jan to 31
6 . 7
¼F6 . 7 ð5Þ
6 7 Jan 2015. In the second step, the effect of the geomagnetic
6 .. 7
6 . 7
6
6 ..
7
7
storm is studied by calculating the variations between quiet
6 . 7 and stormy days in satellites and receivers’ DCBs. The
6 7
6 . 7
6 .. 7 study includes data from June 2015 during a severe G4-
6 7
6 . 7
6 .. 7 class geomagnetic storm of seven IGS reference stations.
6 7
6 P ðnÞ 7 The last step introduces the variation of DCB during differ-
6 4 7
6 7
4 0 5 ent seasons. Eleven days are chosen from each month dur-
0 ing 2015 to estimate instrumental biases. The mean DCB of
each season (Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn) is cal-
Where DCBG r ; DCBr are the receiver DCB for GPS and
R
culated to study the seasonal change effect on DCB.
GLONASS, respectively, DCBG R
si , DCBsi are the satellites
DCB for GPS and GLONASS, respectively, Icoef is the
ionospheric coefficient that can be used to calculate VTEC, 4. Validation of the algorithm
n, and k are the number of observations, and the number
of ionospheric coefficients, The observations of nine GNSS reference stations,
namely: BOGI, BRUX, GANP, GRAS, HERT, ONSA,
f 21 f 22 POTS, SOFI, and WTZZ, shown in Fig. 3 during the per-
F ¼ Mp ðzÞ ð6Þ
40:3ðf 21  f 22 Þ iod from 1 Jan to 31 Jan 2015 (station GANP was out of
service and do not have RINEX files on 8 and 9 January),
and are used as an input data to make a comparison between
the results from the three algorithms: GR_DCB,
X
N X
n
ZDDCBE, and S_DCB. These stations include the stations
Eðb; sÞ ¼ n sinðbÞðan cosðmsÞ þ bn sinðmsÞÞ
Pm m m
ð7Þ Jin et al. (2012) used that received GLONASS observations
n¼0 m¼0
and others from the same region. This study aims to verify
As the number of satellites observed at different stations how employing weight functions and adding GLONASS
may differ, the DCB for the satellites with no observations observations affects the accuracy of DCB estimates, which
are read from the IONosphere map EXchange (IONEX) is supposed to improve results accuracy. The year 2015 was
file, and their sum is added with inverse signal replacing selected since it was the year of the geomagnetic storm
zero in observation vector (L) to keep zero difference the under study and because all GLONASS satellites are avail-
same for all stations. able throughout this year.
A weight function is used to reduce observations noise Absolute mean error and Root Mean Square (RMS) are
in addition. The weight function depends on the satellite computed for each software result to assess its accuracy as
elevation angle at each observation. The form of the follows:
weighted least square is defined by the following equation Pn  
software 
m¼1 DCBm  DCBm
 IGS
(Ghilani and Wolf, 2012): n¼
n
X ¼ ðAT xAÞ  1AT xL ð8Þ ð10Þ
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Fig. 2. The flowchart of the GR_DCB software.

Fig. 3. The location of the used IGS reference stations.

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A. Wageeh et al. Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
uP Table 2
u n software 2
u ðDCBIGS m  DCBm Þ Mean GLONASS RDCB values from IGS, GR_DCB, absolute mean
tm¼1 error between them from January 1–31, 2015, and RMS for BRUX,
RMS ¼ GANP, GRAS, HERT, ONSA, POTS, SOFI, and WTZZ.
n 
ð11Þ Station IGS RDCB (ns) GR_DCB RDCB (ns) n(ns) RMS (ns)
BRUX 2.23 2.21 0.17 0.20
 GANP 10.43 10.32 0.19 0.23
Where n is an absolute mean error, is DCB DCBIGS
m GRAS 16.07 16.36 0.31 0.36
from solutions of the IGS Analysis Centers, DCBm software
is HERT 12.18 12.17 0.15 0.20
ONSA 9.08 8.95 0.21 0.29
the calculated DCB from the used software (GR_DCB,
POTS 15.88 15.60 0.35 0.43
ZDDCBE, or S_DCB), and n is the total number of study SOFI 4.62 5.44 0.82 0.85
days. WTZZ 8.99 9.26 0.30 0.37
Table 1 shows the absolute mean error and RMS of
GPS RDCB values calculated by GR_DCB, ZDDCBE,
and S_DCB from 1 to 31 Jan 2015. The results show that GLONASS. The results show that the GLONASS contri-
applying the weight function in GR_DCB and ZDDCBE bution reduced the mean error in all stations, although
made their RDCB results closer to IGS solutions than the impact varies. For instance, BOGI and ONSA stations
S_DCB in BOGI, BRUX, GANP, GRAS, HERT, POTS, experienced a modest improvement of about 0.03 ns, while
and WTZZ stations. Adding GLONASS observations in BRUX, GRAS, and HERT SDCB results were more con-
the GR_DCB enhanced the accuracy of RDCB against sistent in the GR_DCB results, and the absolute mean
ZDDCBE in all stations except BOGI. GR_DCB gives errors were relatively small. Notably, RDCB and SDCB
RDCB results with only 0.17 ns absolute mean error in results from ZDDCBE and GR_DCB at GRAS had
GANP and HERT with RMS at GANP of 0.20 ns. Even high error rates of 1.31 and 1.43 ns on average, respec-
with inaccurate observations in GRAS, the RDCB error tively, and the inclusion of GLONASS in GR_DCB
is only 0.49 ns from IGS compared with 2.26 ns from reduced the error to 0.43 ns only.
ZDDCBE and 2.65 ns from S_DCB, which gives a strong To ensure the consistency of SDCB calculated from dif-
advantage of adding GLONASS to GPS in reducing inac- ferent stations on the same day, the daily standard devia-
curate DCB results. Compared to other solutions, the low tion for each GPS SDCB is estimated across the nine
RDCB values RMS from the GR_DCB solution show the stations in January. The results, presented in Fig. 5, indi-
low dispersion in software results. GR_DCB max absolute cate that the variations in SDCB across stations range
mean error from IGS is 0.71 ns in SOFI with RMS 0.75 ns. between 0.2 and 0.6 ns, with a few outliers showing a high
The GLONASS RDCB values are compared to the corre- correlation between the results. Notably, satellite G 26
sponding IGS product in Table 2 to validate GLONASS had limited observations, with data available for only the
results (station BOGI has no GLONASS DCB values in first five days of the month. Overall, the results are accept-
IGS IONEX files; it could not be compared). The absolute able for the single-receiver analysis adopted in this study.
mean error and RMS are between 0.15 and 0.2 ns in HERT
and 0.35 and 0.43 ns in POTS, except for SOFI, with 0.82 5. DCB variation under varied factors
and 0.85 ns, respectively.
GPS SDCB values were obtained at each station using The DCB is known to be device (satellite or receiver)
GR_DCB, ZDDCBE, and S_DCB. Fig. 4 displays the dependent. Still, many researchers show that any change
average of all GPS satellites’ absolute mean error between in ionospheric total electron content reflects on it, as illus-
IGS and the computed SDCB values by these methods to trated in the introduction. This part discusses two main
indicate the GPS SDCB estimation accuracy after adding parameters affecting the ionosphere and the DCB estima-

Table 1
Absolute mean error and RMS of the obtained GPS RDCB values from GR_DCB, ZDDCBE, and S_DCB using the values from IGS as a reference from
January 1–31, 2015 for BOGI, BRUX, GANP, GRAS, HERT, ONSA, POTS, SOFI, and WTZZ.

Station n of GPS RDCB (ns) RMS of GPS RDCB (ns)
GR_DCB ZDDCBE S_DCB GR_DCB ZDDCBE S_DCB
BOGI 0.27 0.26 0.36 0.35 0.34 0.46
BRUX 0.19 0.23 0.28 0.23 0.31 0.36
GANP 0.17 0.22 0.27 0.20 0.27 0.33
GRAS 0.49 2.26 2.65 0.53 2.94 2.81
HERT 0.17 0.34 0.44 0.22 0.45 0.58
ONSA 0.29 0.24 0.23 0.35 0.32 0.29
POTS 0.25 0.31 0.35 0.32 0.40 0.47
SOFI 0.71 0.88 0.46 0.75 0.91 0.52
WTZZ 0.29 0.31 0.31 0.36 0.39 0.41

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A. Wageeh et al.

Fig. 4. The average of the 32 GPS satellites’ absolute mean error (n) GR_DCB, ZDDCBE, and S_DCB computed DCB from 1 to 31 January 2015 for
BOGI, BRUX, GANP, GRAS, HERT, ONSA, POTS, SOFI, and WTZZ.
Fig. 5. Daily station-to-station variations of GPS SDCB across BOGI, BRUX, GANP, GRAS, HERT, ONSA, POTS, SOFI, and WTZZ for each
satellite in January.
tion: the geomagnetic storms and different environmental
states over various seasons. GPS and GLONASS instru-
mental DCB are calculated under different conditions to
show the influence of each of these parameters on DCB.
5.1. Geomagnetic storm effect on DCB estimation
One of the largest solar activities of solar cycle 24 was
on 22–23 June 2015 (Augusto et al., 2018). Several Coronal
Mass Ejections (CMEs) were produced, resulting in a mod-
erate to severe G4-class geomagnetic storm on 22 June with
an interplanetary 3-hour magnetic index (Kp) greater than
eight between 18:00 and 21:00 UT (as shown in Fig. 6). In
this section, the effect of the geomagnetic storm on DCB is
considered in this study.
The DCB values are calculated during the two storm
days, two days before and two days after the storm (20–
26 June 2015), to show the variation in DCB for seven sta-
tions: BRUX, GANP, GOPE, GRAS, HERT, POTS, and
SOFI. The results for receivers obtained using GR_DCB in
Table 3 show a decrease in RDCB during the geomagnetic
storm in all GPS and GLONASS stations and may be pre-
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Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945
ceded by a slight rise in some. In BRUX, GANP, GRAS,
POTS, and SOFI, the GPS RDCB values increase by a
range from 0.02 to 0.88 ns in BRUX and SOFI, respec-
tively, on 22-jun from the previous day before they
decrease on the next day. The same is true about GLO-
NASS RDCB in POTS and SOFI. This attitude can be
explained by the fact that the geomagnetic storm has two
phases: the positive phase, which caused an increase in
some stations, and the negative phase, which was more
robust and caused a decrease the next day. The proposed
explanation agrees with Zhang et al. (2009) test results of
DCB and TEC on the three geomagnetic storms they stud-
ied in 2004, 2005, and 2006. In GRAS, a significant change
in GLONASS RDCB is recorded (more than 3.5 ns)
because the receiver was changed from TRIMBLE NETR5
 4.70 to TRIMBLE NETR5  4.87 on 23 June (can be
checked on the IGS website ‘‘https://igs.org/imaps/sta-
tion.php?id=gras00fra”).
To discuss the accuracy of GR_DCB SDCB results dur-
ing the geomagnetic storm, the SDCB results difference
from IGS is introduces in Fig. 7 on June 21, 22, and 23.
For GPS, the SDCB estimation error ranges from 1.2
A. Wageeh et al. Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945

Fig. 6. Geomagnetic indexes from 20 Jun to 24, 2015 (universal time). (a) The interplanetary magnetic field component Bz in (nT), (b) The solar wind
speed Vp in (km/s), and (c) the Kp index.

Fig. 7. SDCB differences (ns) between GR_DCB results at BRUX and IGS IONEX for GPS (A) and GLONASS (B) satellites on 21, 22, and 23 June.

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A. Wageeh et al. Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945

Table 3
The RDCB in ns for GPS on the left and GLONASS on the right before, during, and after the geomagnetic storm (22,23 June 2015 shaded in gray) for
BRUX, GANP, GOPE, GRAS, HERT, POTS, and SOFI.
Station GPS RDCB (ns) GLONASS RDCB (ns)
20-Jun 21-Jun 22-Jun 23-Jun 24-Jun 25-Jun 20-Jun 21-Jun 22-Jun 23-Jun 24-Jun 25-Jun
BRUX 7.80 7.76 7.78 7.21 7.41 7.77 2.46 2.46 2.53 3.03 2.86 2.51
GANP 10.18 9.15 8.98 10.14 9.89 10.81 10.68 9.98 10.77 11.30 10.22 10.45
GOPE 5.01 5.47 5.14 4.96 5.14 5.35 3.18 3.92 3.35 3.38 3.24 3.48
GRAS 18.28 18.20 17.73 18.52 17.87 18.05 16.38 16.52 16.02 14.78 13.14 13.01
HERT 8.26 8.26 8.17 7.71 7.72 7.99 12.55 12.54 12.62 13.14 13.08 12.89
POTS 5.28 5.33 5.48 4.49 4.84 5.53 15.58 15.40 15.33 16.38 16.27 15.45
SOFI 14.42 14.05 14.93 14.35 14.70 13.98 5.90 6.43 5.57 5.99 5.77 6.36

Table 4
The difference in RDCB between GR_DCB and IGS IONEX in ns for GPS on the left and GLONASS on the right, before, during, and after the
geomagnetic storm (shaded in gray) for BRUX, GANP, GOPE, GRAS, HERT, POTS, and SOFI.
Station GPS RDCB difference (ns) GLONASS RDCB difference (ns)
20-Jun 21-Jun 22-Jun 23-Jun 24-Jun 25-Jun 20-Jun 21-Jun 22-Jun 23-Jun 24-Jun 25-Jun
BRUX 0.14 0.14 0.13 0.01 0.01 0.29 0.05 0.01 0.11 0.14 0.12 0.22
GANP 0.31 0.22 0.06 0.39 0.33 0.49 0.13 0.48 0.00 0.25 0.36 0.25
GOPE 0.37 0.00 0.13 0.09 0.04 0.12 0.76 0.06 0.41 0.07 0.36 0.18
GRAS 0.41 0.27 0.29 0.30 0.07 0.16 0.43 0.24 0.78 0.18 0.44 0.40
HERT 0.02 0.01 0.15 0.10 0.35 0.08 0.04 0.08 0.12 0.14 0.29 0.11
POTS 0.04 0.08 0.26 0.34 0.32 0.33 0.63 0.70 0.76 0.12 0.06 0.82
SOFI 0.84 1.27 0.30 0.46 0.34 0.96 0.75 1.25 0.50 0.28 0.29 0.74

Fig. 8. The IONEX DCB deviation for the duration of 17 to 26 June 2015 from the first day (16 June) for six GPS satellites (A) and six GLONASS
satellites (B); the stormy days are shaded in gray.

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A. Wageeh et al.
to 1 ns, , while for GLONASS, it ranges from 1.4 to 2.2
ns. The error oscillates during the three days with no dis-
cernible trend indicating that the storm decreases the
SDCB estimation accuracy.
The difference in RDCB between GR_DCB and IGS
products is listed in Table 4 to consider the impact of geo-
magnetic storms on the proposed software estimation accu-
racy. The table shows no noticeable increase in stormy days
compared to quiet days, as the error gets less in some sta-
tions and greater in others for both constellations. The
maximum absolute difference on stormy days is 0.46 and
0.78 ns for GPS and GLONASS, respectively. The absolute
error for stormy days RDCB is 0.22 and 0.28 ns compared
to 0.28 and 0.37 ns for quiet days for GPS and GLONASS,
respectively. The table indicates that the introduced model
is reliable on stormy days, and solar activities do not affect
results accuracy.
Fig. 8 indicates a sample of the IONEX SDCBs devia-
tion from the first day (DCB of each day minus 17 June)
from 17 to 26 June for GPS and GLONASS. GPS SDCB
values are very stable with a max daily change of 0.12 ns
compared with GLONASS SDCB, which looks very diver-
gent and sparse, reaching 0.2 ns daily change. No trend can
be established from the Figure to describe the SDCB
Fig. 9. The RDCB for GPS on the top (continuous lines) and GLONASS on the bottom (dash lines) stations computed by GR_DCB for BRUX, GOPE,
HERT, POTS, and SOFI over 2015.
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Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945
behavior on stormy days except a bit greater scattering
for two GPS satellites agreeing with Zhang et al. (2009)
results that the deviation of SDCB is more significant on
stormy days than quiet days.
5.2. Seasonal change effect on DCB estimation
A systematic variation in DCB occurs during different
seasons caused by the environmental state, including tem-
perature and humidity (Mylnikova et al., 2015). The
RDCB of five stations: BRUX, GOPE, HERT, POTS,
and SOFI, are calculated during the four seasons in 2015
to study the DCB variation from one season to another
and if it is the same for GLONASS as GPS or not. These
five stations are chosen because they have continuous
observations throughout the year without any breaks. In
addition to the 31 days in January, eleven days are chosen
systematically from each month (one every three days)
from February to December to represent the entire year.
The calculated GPS and GLONASS receiver DCB all
over the year 2015 for stations BRUX, GOPE, HERT,
POTS, and SOFI are shown in Fig. 9. The maximum differ-
ences observed between GPS receiver DCB throughout the
year were 1.88, 1.58, 1.89, 3.83, and 2.44 ns for BRUX,
A. Wageeh et al. Advances in Space Research 72 (2023) 3933–3945

Table 5
The mean GPS and GLONASS RDCB in ns for seasons Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter during 2015 for BRUX, GOPE, HERT, POTS, and SOFI.
Station Mean GPS RDCB (ns) Mean GLONASS RDCB (ns)
Winter Spring Summer Autumn Winter Spring Summer Autumn
BRUX 7.90 7.77 7.39 7.15 2.28 2.44 2.69 2.67
GOPE 5.25 5.10 4.74 4.72 3.60 3.58 3.23 3.35
HERT 8.40 8.13 7.76 7.63 12.34 12.70 12.83 12.72
POTS 5.22 5.08 4.74 4.44 15.58 15.82 15.96 15.97
SOFI 14.74 14.52 14.13 13.90 5.53 5.79 6.08 5.99

Table 6
The GPS and GLONASS RDCB RMS in ns for seasons Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter during 2015 for BRUX, GOPE, HERT, POTS, and SOFI.
Station GPS RDCB RMS (ns) GLONASS RDCB RMS (ns)
Winter Spring Summer Autumn Winter Spring Summer Autumn
BRUX 0.30 0.31 0.28 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.25 0.14
GOPE 0.23 0.29 0.31 0.26 0.23 0.30 0.32 0.28
HERT 0.30 0.30 0.26 0.17 0.28 0.32 0.23 0.16
POTS 0.55 0.42 0.41 0.41 0.46 0.47 0.37 0.43
SOFI 0.42 0.36 0.26 0.34 0.30 0.45 0.22 0.27

GOPE, HERT, POTS, and SOFI, respectively. The maxi-
mum differences for GLONASS receivers in these same sta-
tions were 1.56, 1.66, 1.89, 3.16, and 2.25 ns. It is
noteworthy that the maximum GLONASS DCB difference
was very close to GPS DCB in all stations, which can be
attributed to the fact that both systems are affected by sim-
ilar temperature and humidity conditions.
The mean RDCB for each season is calculated from the
obtained results using GR_DCB, as shown in Table 5. All
GPS station’s mean DCB results have the lowest values in
Autumn and the greatest in Winter, with a difference of
0.53 ns in GOPE compared to 0.84 ns in SOFI. After Win-
ter, Spring mean RDCB values are greater than Summer.
Same as GPS, GLONASS in Winter also gives the greatest
RDCB values in all stations, but it has the lowest RDCB
values in Summer in all stations except POTS. The differ-
ence between Summer and Autumn in GLONASS mean
RDCB is between 0.37 and 0.54 ns in GOPE and SOFI,
respectively. The results show that GLONASS RDCB is
less affected by seasonal change than GPS RDCB in the
study area for these stations; however, further analysis is
needed to draw definitive conclusions.
It is also important to study the deviation in results dur-
ing each season. Therefore, the RMS for the RDCB during
the four seasons is calculated in Table 6. The RMS is
between 0.17 and 0.55 ns for GPS in Autumn for HERT
and Winter for POTS, respectively, and 0.14 and 0.47 ns
for GLONASS in Autumn for BRUX and Spring for
POTS. Table 6 also indicates that Autumn and Summer
have the least dispersion in RDCB values for both constel-
lations except GOPE, which may be affected by any other
reason.
The results show a significant correlation between the
ambient temperature and the seasonal RDCB variations,
and it is the key to the RDCB stability matching Liu
et al. (2020) conclusions. They also agree with Mylnikova
3943
et al. (2015) hypothesis that the RDCB seasonal variation
is associated with the receiver environment. The high tem-
perature (Summer and Autumn) matches the minimum
seasonal DCB variation.
6. Conclusion
This study presents a new software GR_DCB to esti-
mate instrumental biases Using single-station data analysis
and dual-frequency observations from GPS and GLO-
NASS by incorporating observations from 24 GLONASS
satellites. The software is validated by analyzing data from
9 stations from 1 to 31 Jan 2015, and the results demon-
strate a high level of agreement with IGS combined prod-
ucts. GR_DCB is compared with two other algorithms
(ZDDCBE and S_DCB) for calculating both satellites
and receivers using the same duration and station, giving
better results. Moreover, when some stations have high
errors in GPS DCB estimation, adding GLONASS obser-
vations concretely reduces the errors and enhances the
accuracy.
GR_DCB is used to investigate the influence of geomag-
netic storms on the instrumental bias during June 22–23,
2015. The common behavior of RDCB during the geomag-
netic storm is to decrease by 0.3 to 1.0 ns for GPS and 0.5
to 1.3 ns for GLONASS, with some stations noticing a
slight increase in RDCB before the decrease. However,
the results from GR_DCB and IONEX products show that
the storm does not affect SDCB for GPS and GLONASS.
The RDCB is calculated using the proposed software for
five stations for eleven days each month in 2015 to study
the effect of environmental changes (humidity and temper-
ature) on RDCB. Hence, the mean and RMS are estimated
for each season. The mean values for GPS and GLONASS
RDCB are lowest in Autumn and Summer, respectively,
when the temperature is high. The highest RDCB mean
A. Wageeh et al.
values for the two constellations are in Winter when the
temperature is low. The RMS for both systems is propor-
tional to the DCB value, with Winter having the highest
RMS and conversely for Summer and Autumn.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
The RINEX data, precise orbits products, and IONEX
products were obtained through the online archives of the
Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS),
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD,
USA. RINEX data: https://cddis.nasa.gov/archive/
gnss/data/daily/ GPS precise orbits (sp3): https://cd-
dis.nasa.gov/archive/gnss/products/ GLONASS precise
orbits (sp3): https://cddis.nasa.gov/archive/glonass/prod-
ucts/ IONEX products: https://cddis.nasa.gov/archive/
gnss/products/ionex/
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online
at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2023.07.063.
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