GNSS Antenna Impact on the Resulting Multipath Effects in Carrier-Phase and Signal Amplitude

The impact of multipath propagation has attracted significant attention in the GNSS related studies and different approaches have been developed for the characterization of this phenomenon. In this paper, we present a new approach for the characterization of multipath effects in the GNSS observables where the impact of the receiving antenna is also considered. In modeling the receiving GNSS antenna by its gain pattern characteristics, we are able to calculate the relative amplitude between direct and indirect signal components. In this way, multipath effect on the GNSS carrier-phase can be simulated for complete satellite arcs. We present a simulation study on the impact that different GNSS antennas have on the resulting multipath errors. In a second step, the simulations are compared with GNSS data captured in a dedicated experiment. This investigation is the pre-step towards an in-depth quantification of the impact of multipath propagation on the GNSS observables.