A Refinement to the World Geodetic System 1984 Reference Frame

Michael J. Merrigan, Everett R. Swift, Robert F. Wong, and Joedy T. Saffel

Abstract:	Using 15 days of Global Positioning System (GPS) pseudorange and carrier phase data collected during February 2001, a refined set of World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) station coordinates for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and Air Force permanent tracking stations was generated. These coordinates, designated WGS 84 (G1150), are for the current 17 NIMA and Air Force stations plus additional stations at Maspalomas, Beijing, China, Holloman AFB, Patrick AFB, Edwards AFB, Applied Research Laboratories of the University of Texas, NIMA/St. Louis, and two sites at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division. The accuracy of each station coordinate component is estimated to be on the order of one cm, one sigma. A tie to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame 2000 (ITRF2000) was achieved through holding the coordinates of a large subset of 49 International GPS Service (IGS) fiducial sites fixed. Seven-parameter similarity transformations were computed to examine the systematic differences between station coordinate sets and between orbit estimate sets. For all cases, the transformation parameters indicated that the WGS 84 and ITRF2000 reference frames are essentially identical. Additionally, the differences between the estimated Earth orientation parameters and the International Earth Rotation Service final values were reduced. Comparisons performed against independent solutions for four NIMA and three IGS stations support the stated overall accuracy of better than one cm per component, one sigma.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002) September 24 - 27, 2002 Oregon Convention Center Portland, OR
Pages:	1519 - 1529
Cite this article:	Merrigan, Michael J., Swift, Everett R., Wong, Robert F., Saffel, Joedy T., "A Refinement to the World Geodetic System 1984 Reference Frame," Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002), Portland, OR, September 2002, pp. 1519-1529.
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