A STUDY OF TROPOSPHERIC EFFECT ON HIGH PRECISION GPS HEIGHT DETERMINATION

Constantly enhancing positioning accuracy by the Global Positioning System (GPS) technique is of great importance, but challenging, especially after the GPS positioning technique has been improved considerably during the past two decades. The associated main error sources have been reduced substantially, if not eliminated. Troposhpeic influence with its highly temporal and spatial variability appears to be one of the major error sources. It is hence an increased interest among GPS researchers to reduce the tropospheric influence or delay. Two techniques have been commonly implemented to correct the tropospheric impact. The first technique, known as parameter estimation, characterizes the path delay with empirical models and the parameters of interest are determined from the GPS measurements. The second strategy, termed as external correction, involves independent path delay measurements. The present study is an integration of both techniques in which the parameter estimation as well as external correction are used to correct the path delay for $110{\sim}210$ km range baselines. Twenty-four parameters have been obtained in 24 hours solution by setting the cutoff angle at 3 and 15 degrees for parameter estimation strategy. Measurements from meteorological instruments and water vapor radiometer (WVR) are applied in the GPS data processing, separately, as an external strategy of present research work. Interesting results have been found, indicating more stable repeatability in baseline when the external correction strategy is applied especially with the inclusion of WVR observations. The offset of an order of 1 cm is found in the baselines determined by the two strategies. On the other hand, parameter estimation exhibits more stable in terms of GPS height repeatability. The offset in the GPS height determined by the two strategies is on the order of few centimeters.