Table 3.

1: Overview of ambiguity resolution methods

3.1.5 Other ambiguity resolution methods Besides LAMBDA, several other

ambiguity resolution methods have been described in literature. Table 3.1.5 gives
an overview of some well-known methods with references.Only TCAR and CIR are
based on the bootstrapping estimator, all other methods are based on the ILS
principle of minimizing the squared norm of residuals. The methods essentially differ
in the way the search space is defined. In Kim and Langley (2000),some of the
methods were conceptually compared. A comparison of LAMBDA with CIR, TCAR,
ITCAR and the Null-method is made in Joosten and Verhagen (2003), Verhagen and
Joosten (2004).
3.2 Quality of the integer ambiguity solution
The uncertainty of parameter estimators is captured by their parameter
distribution. For normally distributed data, the uncertainty is completely captured
by the vc-matrix. However, the GNSS model contains integer parameters to which
this does not apply. In this section, the distributional properties of both the realvalued and the integer ambiguity parameters are described. An important measure
of the reliability of the fixed solution is the probability of correct integer estimation,
the success rate. Once the parameter distribution of the integer estimator is given,
the success rate can be determined. This will be the subject of section 3.2.2.
3.2.1 Parameter distributions of the ambiguity estimators The float
ambiguities are assumed to be normally distributed, i.e. N(a,Q ), see appendix
A.2. The probability density function (PDF) of reads then

f a ( x )=

Q|( 2 ) ( 2 )

1n
2

exp

(12xa) 2

where||denotes

the determinant. The joint PDF of the float and fixed ambiguities is given by:

with s z (x) the indicator function of equation (3.7). For the proof see (Teunissen
2002). The marginal distributions of and a can be recovered from this joint
distribution by integration or summation over respectively x and z. This gives the
following distribution function of the fixed ambiguities:

It is a probability mass function (PMF), and is referred to as the integer normal

distribution for the ILS estimator. The three top panels of figure 3.7 show the
marginal and joint distributions of and a. The distribution of a has some
(desirable) properties, cf.(Teunissen 1998a; Teunissen 1998c). The first is that for all
admissible integer estimators the distribution is symmetric about a:

From this property it follows that all admissible estimators are unbiased:

Another important property is that if a is the correct integer, the probability that this
integer is obtained as solution is always larger than the probability that another

integer is estimated:
Finally, the vc-matrix of the fixed ambiguities follows from equation (3.28) as:

Figure 3.7: The joint and marginal distribution of , a and PDF f(x) (top left);
joint PDF f, (x,z) (top middle); PMF P( = z) (top right); PDF f ,a (x,z) (bottom
middle); PDF f (x) (bottom right).
3.2.2 Success rates
The success rate, P s , equals the probability that the ambiguities are fixed to the
correc integers. It follows from equation (3.28) as:

It is a very important measure, since the fixed solution should only be used if there
is enough confidence in this solution. In Teunissen (1999a) it was proven that:
for any admissible integer estimator a.
Therefore, the ILS estimator is optimal in the class of admissible integer estimators.

Furthermore,

it

was

shown

in

Teunissen

(1998d)

that:

Unfortunately, it is very complicated to evaluate equation (3.33) for the integer

least-squares estimator because of the complex integration region. Therefore,
approximations

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