PPP Application for Estimation of Tropospheric Zenith Path Delays with High Temporal Resolution

Zhigui Kang, Byron Tapley and Sinivas Bettadpur

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) based precise tropospheric zenith pass delay (ZPD) determination needs precise positioning for ground GNSS stations. Current methods for precise positioning using GNSS technology are Differential GNSS (DGNSS) and Precise Point Positioning (PPP). With the improvements of the PPP performance, the results obtained using both methods are closer in agreement. The DGNSS is or will be replaced by PPP in some application areas of GNSS mainly due to the flexibility of PPP. Therefore, we study the PPP application for estimation of the troposphere ZPD parameters to know how well and how frequent the parameters can be determined. Three factors (spatial and temporal resolution as well as accuracy of the ZPD estimates) are very important for the PPP application in atmosphere research. The spatial resolution problem can be solved by the vast and ever growing network of GNSS tracking stations. The temporal resolution and accuracy are dependent on the data processing strategies, GNSS satellite orbit and clock quality. They are also dependent on the number, precision and distribution of the GNSS observations. The current ZPD products from the International GNSS Service (IGS) have 5-minute sampling. Due to the data processing approach, the ZPD estimates in different time intervals are dependent and the ZPD solutions are constrained. The question is how to handle the ZPD parameters to get independent parameters and unconstrained solutions with a high temporal resolution and high accuracy. This is the main objective of the study. In the paper, we describe here the advantages of the approach used for the ZPD estimates, and investigate the effects of data distribution, model input data and mapping function on the ZDP products. The quality assessments of the ZPD parameters are performed through internal comparisons and external comparisons with IGS final troposphere products.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 28th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2015) September 14 - 18, 2015 Tampa Convention Center Tampa, Florida
Pages:	3534 - 3541
Cite this article:	Kang, Zhigui, Tapley, Byron, Bettadpur, Sinivas, "PPP Application for Estimation of Tropospheric Zenith Path Delays with High Temporal Resolution," Proceedings of the 28th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2015), Tampa, Florida, September 2015, pp. 3534-3541.
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