BDS Precise Point Positioning for Seismic Displacements Monitoring: Benefit from the High-Rate Satellite Clock Corrections

In order to satisfy the requirement of high-rate high-precision applications, 1 Hz BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) satellite clock corrections are generated based on precise orbit products, and the quality of the generated clock products is assessed by comparing with those from the other analysis centers. The comparisons show that the root mean square (RMS) of clock errors of geostationary Earth orbits (GEO) is about 0.63 ns, whereas those of inclined geosynchronous orbits (IGSO) and medium Earth orbits (MEO) are about 0.2–0.3 ns and 0.1 ns, respectively. Then, the 1 Hz clock products are used for BDS precise point positioning (PPP) to retrieve seismic displacements of the 2015 Mw 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake. The derived seismic displacements from BDS PPP are consistent with those from the Global Positioning System (GPS) PPP, with RMS of 0.29, 0.38, and 1.08 cm in east, north, and vertical components, respectively. In addition, the BDS PPP solutions with different clock intervals of 1 s, 5 s, 30 s, and 300 s are processed and compared with each other. The results demonstrate that PPP with 300 s clock intervals is the worst and that with 1 s clock interval is the best. For the scenario of 5 s clock intervals, the precision of PPP solutions is almost the same to 1 s results. Considering the time consumption of clock estimates, we suggest that 5 s clock interval is competent for high-rate BDS solutions.