Objectives Satellite attitudes have a significant impact on global navigation satellite system (GNSS) precise data processing. International GNSS service (IGS) analysis centers publish satellite attitude products in quaternion form using ORBEX (ORBit EXchange) format.

Methods This paper selects 4 multi-GNSS experiment (MGEX) analysis centers including WUM (Wuhan University), COD (Center for Orbit Determination in Europe), GFZ (GeoForschungsZentrum) and CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), and collect GPS and BeiDou-3 satellite navigation system (BDS-3) satellite attitude products spanning the whole year of 2023 from different analysis centers. First, based on satellite attitude quaternions, the yaw angles of GPS/BDS-3 satellites are computed and compared by using corresponding conversion formulas. And the differences of yaw angles during the satellite yaw maneuvers are emphatically compared and analyzed. Then, GPS/BDS-3 precise satellite clock estimation and precise point positioning are conducted by using 122 global MGEX tracking stations, and the impact of satellite yaw attitude on GPS/BDS-3 precise data processing is investigated using different attitude products.

Results Different attitude models are adopted by different analysis centers during yaw maneuvers. The model adopted by GFZ differs significantly from that of the other centers, and the yaw angle differences can be up to 180° while abnormal jumps are observed. Except for GPS Block IIF satellites, the models adopted by WUM and COD are consistent in general. Compared with the nominal attitudes, attitude products can significantly improve the continuity of the GPS/BDS-3 satellite clock estimation and can reduce the standard deviation of the clock quadratic-differences by 85% when opposite yaw directions between the quaternion and nominal attitudes are observed. Kinematic precise point positioning (PPP) experiments show that inconsistent attitude models can cause positioning deviations by affecting the satellite antenna phase center offset and phase wind-up corrections. Compared with the nominal attitudes, the attitude products can achieve the accuracy improvements of 31%, 20%, and 28% for east, north, and up components, respectively.

Conclusions We recommend that the users need to use satellite attitude products matching the corresponding orbit and clock products for GNSS precise data processing.