The accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS) as an instrument for measuring the integrated water vapor content of the atmosphere has been evaluated by comparison with concurrent observations made over a 14-day period by radiosonde, microwave water vapor radiometer (WVR), and Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). The Vaisala RS-80 A-HUMICAP radiosondes required a correction to the relative humidity readings (provided by Vaisala) to account for packaging contamination; the WVR data required a correction in order to be consistent with the wet refractivity formulation of the VLBI, GPS, and radiosondes. The best agreement of zenith wet delay (ZWD) among the collocated WVR, radiosondes, VLBI, and GPS was for minimum elevations of the GPS measurements below 10Њ. After corrections were applied to the WVR and radiosonde measurements, WVR, GPS, and VLBI (with 5Њ minimum elevation angle cutoff ) agreed within ϳ6 mm of ZWD [1 mm of precipitable water vapor (PWV)] when the differences were averaged, while the radiosondes averaged ϳ6 mm of ZWD lower than the WVR. After the removal of biases between the techniques, the VLBI and GPS scales differ by less than 3%, while the WVR scale was ϳ5% higher and the radiosonde scale was ϳ5% lower. Estimates of zenith wet delay by GPS receivers equipped with Dorne-Margolin choke ring antennas were found to have a strong dependence on the minimum elevation angle of the data. Elevation angle dependent phase errors for the GPS antenna/mount combination can produce ZWD errors of greater than 30 mm over a few hour interval for typical GPS satellite coverage. The VLBI measurements of ZWD are independent of minimum elevation angle and, based on known error sources, appear to be the most accurate of the four techniques.
[1] A major limitation in accuracy in modern satellite laser ranging is the modeling of atmospheric refraction. Recent improvements in this area include the development of mapping functions to project the atmospheric delay experienced in the zenith direction to a given elevation angle. In this paper, we derive zenith delay models from revised equations for the computation of the refractive index of the atmosphere, valid for a wide spectrum of optical wavelengths. The zenith total delay predicted with these models were tested against ray tracing through radiosonde data from a full year of data, for 180 stations distributed worldwide, and showed sub-millimeter accuracy for wavelengths ranging from 0.355 mm to 1.064 mm.
[1] We present two new mapping functions (MFs) to model the elevation angle dependence of the atmospheric delay for satellite laser ranging (SLR) data analysis. The new MFs were derived from ray tracing through a set of data from 180 radiosonde stations globally distributed, for the year 1999, and are valid for elevation angles above 3°. When compared against ray tracing of two independent years of radiosonde data (1997 -1998) for the same set of stations, our MFs reveal submillimetre accuracy for elevation angles above 10°, representing a significant improvement over other MFs, and is confirmed in improved solutions of LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2 data analysis.
In this paper, we determine mean bias and root-mean-square RMS scatter for a large number of zenith tropospheric propagation delay prediction models developed in the last few decades by comparing the models against ray-tracing results using a 1-year data set of radiosonde profiles. We conclude that the hydrostatic zenith delay can be predicted with submillimeter accuracy, provided that accurate measurements of station pressure are available. For wet zenith delay, the models differ significantly in accuracy, but show very similar RMS scatter. Our analyses show that the wet zenith delay can typically be predicted with a precision of approximately 3 cm using meteorological data. The prediction of the total delay by models typically used in airborne navigation indicates a much poorer accuracy, leading to prediction biases ranging from around 6 cm to more than 20 cm. In general, all the models tested perform significantly better at midlatitudes than at low latitudes. for precise airborne relative positioning is further complicated by the large height difference generally
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