Real-time Water Vapor Sensing/Measurements with Precise Point Positioning Algorithm and Canadian Geodetic (GPS) Network

W. Tao, Y. Gao and Y. Zhang

Abstract:	Climate monitoring and climate research as well as operational weather forecasting need close to real-time water vapor observations. Due to its high variability in both space and time, water vapor remains one of the most poorly characterized meteorological parameters. Canada sparse spatial and temporal sampling of atmospheric water vapor observation needs to be improved. New GPS meteorological theory plus emerging Canadian geodetic (GPS) network provides a unique opportunity to this need. Current water vapor determination using GPS is based on Differential GPS (DGPS) techniques which apply doubledifference observations from two GPS receivers to eliminate common satellite and receiver errors and provides accurate water vapor estimates. However, the effectiveness of the DGPS is largely limited by the distance between the two receivers. An alternative to DGPS is the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) method which uses un-differenced observations from a single GPS receiver aided by precise orbit and clock products currently available from organizations such as International GNSS Service (IGS). Since PPP technique can effectively eliminate the inter-station limitation imposed by DGPS, it can be implemented within a sparse GPS network. This paper presents the latest work in the development of a real-time GPS data acquisition and water vapor sensing system based on PPP algorithm and Canadian geodetic (GPS) network.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2007) September 25 - 28, 2007 Fort Worth Convention Center Fort Worth, TX
Pages:	2890 - 2897
Cite this article:	Tao, W., Gao, Y., Zhang, Y., "Real-time Water Vapor Sensing/Measurements with Precise Point Positioning Algorithm and Canadian Geodetic (GPS) Network," Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2007), Fort Worth, TX, September 2007, pp. 2890-2897.
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