Skip navigation


You are in:  Home » Publications » Reports » Report 23

Tropospheric Delay Modelling for GPS Measurements in Antarctica

Alexander V. Prokopov, Yeugeniy V. Remayev
Kharkov State Research Institute of Metrology, Mironositskaya st. 42, 61002 Ukraine

E-mail: NIL1@metrology.kharkov.ua

back to AGS '03 Program

The accuracy of tropospheric delay modeling for polar regions was investigated. Ray tracing technique and data of radiosounding for antarctic meteorological stations accessible in the Internet (http://weather.uwyo. edu/upperair/sounding.html) were used in researches. The results show that the errors of known methods of determination of tropospheric corrections for GPS are much higher for Antarctica than for middle latitudes. For example, errors of methods [1,2] for Mirnyj station are 3…4 times above than for USA and Europe.

The effect of the significant contribution of a wet component in delay of a signal at heights above tropopause predicted for Antarctica by F.D.Zablotskyj [3] is confirmed.

On the basis of the IROA method [1] the preliminary version of regional (antarctic) model for determination of delay from ground meteorological data is developed. The testing which has been carried out by the ray tracing technique with the use of yearly sets of radiosounding profiles obtained for Mirnyj station showed: the accuracy of the developed model in a range of zenith angles 0°…80° is 1,5 … 2,5 time higher than accuracy of known models.

The obtained results shows the need for further researches with the aim of increasing the accuracy of tropospheric delay models by taking into account the peculiarities of spatial distributions of atmospheric parameters in polar regions..

References:

[1] Prokopov A. and Remayev Ye.,. «New approach to the problem of determinationof atmospheric refractivity corrections for space geodetic applications». Reports on Geodesy, 2000, No 9 (55), P.43-48.
[2] Davis J.L, Herring T.A., Shapiro I.I., Rogers A.E.E. and Elgered G. Geodesy byradiointerferometry: Effects of atmospheric modeling errors on estimates of baseline length.// Radioscience. – 1985. – Vol. 20. – No. 6. P.1593 – 1607.
[3] Zablotskyj F.D. On atmospheric influences on astrogeodetic measurements inPolar Regions: SCAR Report - May 2001// Publ/ Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research at Scott Polar Research Institute. - Cambridge (United Kingdom). - 2001. - 120. - P. 50 - 55.