Decorrelation of Troposphere Across Short Baselines

David Lawrence, Richard B. Langley, Donghyun Kim, Fang-Cheng Chan, and Boris Pervan

Abstract:	The performance of GNSS RTK systems is strongly dependent on spatial correlation of tropospheric errors. However, normal storm activity can cause conditions where tropospheric delays can be significantly different even across relatively short baselines. In this paper, the decorrelation of tropospheric delay over short baselines (2 to 10 km) is investigated. Data from pairs of CORS stations as well as independently collected data are used to derive doubledifference phase residuals for L1 and L2 measurements. The known coordinates of the ends of the baseline are accounted for in the calculation of the residuals to provide a measurement of double-difference phase errors. Multipath contributions to the phase errors are minimized by comparing data collected on consecutive days. Tropospheric effects are isolated from ionospheric effects by looking for signatures unique to the troposphere. One such signature is the relative magnitude of the L1 and L2 residuals. A second signature is correlation with local weather data and absence of correlation with ionospheric activity. A strong correlation is seen between storm activity shown on local weather radar and high residuals. Residuals attributed to the troposphere equivalent to at least 12 parts per million for overhead satellites are observed across short baselines.
Published in:	Proceedings of IEEE/ION PLANS 2006 April 25 - 27, 2006 Loews Coronado Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	94 - 102
Cite this article:	Lawrence, David, Langley, Richard B., Kim, Donghyun, Chan, Fang-Cheng, Pervan, Boris, "Decorrelation of Troposphere Across Short Baselines," Proceedings of IEEE/ION PLANS 2006, San Diego, CA, April 2006, pp. 94-102. https://doi.org/10.1109/PLANS.2006.1650592
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