Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The impact of relative and absolute GNSS positioning strategies on estimated coordinates and ZWD in the framework of meteorological applications

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Applied Geomatics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Since many years, the GNSS has been regarded by the meteorological community as one of the systems for atmospheric water vapour remote sensing. Time series of wet delays, estimated as by-products of accurate positioning, have been assimilated into numerical weather prediction models. However, a dedicated use the system for water vapour monitoring is still under investigation. Ad hoc dense networks have been designed and implemented to collect data at a high spatial resolution, baseline lengths lower than 10 km, with the aim of describing the high spatial and temporal variability of tropospheric water vapour. Within this framework, the paper reports a study on how the positioning strategy affects the estimated coordinates and tropospheric parameters. The study was conducted on the data collected by an experimental network of geodetic receivers, used as single or dual frequency ones. More specifically, investigations were made on the use of L1-only or iono-free combinations in differential positioning of receivers 100 to 10 km apart, finding that L1-only data provide more accurate results. Therefore, comparisons between local coordinates and ZWD obtained from relative and absolute positioning were performed to provide the statistics of the differences; the agreement between the results for short baselines is always better than 1 cm standard deviation. In order to assess the differences in the results that can be obtained from the two strategies when applied to the same observation set, a further comparison was carried out in terms of baseline components and ZWD increments. It results that, even for dense networks, the differential approach produces accurate results without losing information compared to the absolute one.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Abbreviations

APS:

atmospheric phase screen

CODE:

Center for Orbit Determination in Europe

DD:

double difference

GIM:

global ionosphere maps

GNSS:

Global Navigation Satellite Systems

InSAR:

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

IWV:

integrated water vapour

NWP:

numerical weather prediction models

PCV:

phase center variation

PN:

permanent network

PPP:

precise point positioning

PWV:

precipitable water vapour

WVR:

water vapour radiometer

ZTD:

zenith total delay

ZWD:

zenith wet delay

References

  • Baby BH, Golé P, Lavergnat J (1988) A model for the tropospheric excess path length of radio waves from surface meteorological measurements. Radio Sci 23(6):1023–1038

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bennitt GV, Jupp A (2012) Operational assimilation of GPS zenith total delay observations into the Met office numerical weather prediction models. Mon Wea Rev 140(8):2706–2719

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bevis M, Businger S, Herring TA, Rocken C, Anthes RA, Ware RH (1992) GPS Meteorology: remote sensing of atmospheric water vapor using the Global Positioning System. J Geophys Res: Atmos 97(D14):15787–15801

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • BRIGAID - H2020 project - Precipitable Water Vapour Monitoring (2016) http://brigaid.eu/meet-our-innovations-precipitable-water-vapour-monitoring. Accessed 16 May 2017

  • Dach R, Lutz S, Walser P, Fridez P (2015) BERNESE GNSS Software version 5.2. University of Bern, Bern Open Publishing

  • EDWIGE - Eurostars-2 project (2016) https://www.eurostars-eureka.eu/project/id/10235. Accessed 16 May 2017

  • Elliott WP, Gaffen DJ (1991) On the utility of radiosonde humidity archives for climate studies. Bull Amer Meteor Soc 72:1507–1520

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gelb A (1974) Applied optimal estimation. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Herring TA, Davis JL, Shapiro II (1990) Geodesy by radio interferometry: the application of Kalman filtering to the analysis of very long baseline interferometry data. J Geophys Res 95(B8):12561–12581

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herring TA (1992) Modeling atmospheric delays in the analysis of space geodetic data. J Geophys Res 74:4487–4499

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofmann-Wellenhof B, Lichtenegger H, Collins J (2001) Global positioning system theory and practice. Springer-Verlag, Wien

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ishikawa Y (2010) The Use of Ground Based GPS Data for Meso-scale Analysis. Suuchi Yohouka Houkoku Bessatsu (Additional Vol Report Numer Prediction Div) 56:54–60. (In Japanese)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleijer F (2004) Troposphere modeling and filtering for precise GPS leveling. Dissertation, TU Delft

  • Kouba J, Héroux P (2001) Precise Point Positioning using IGS orbit and clock products. GPS Solutions 5(2):2–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacMillan DS (1995) Atmospheric gradients from very long base interferometry observations. Geophys Res Lett 22:1041–1044

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • METAWAVE - ESA Contract No. ESTEC-21207/07/NL/HE (2007) “Metawave - Mitigation of Electromagnetic Transmission errors induced by Atmospheric Water Vapour Effects” 2007–2009

  • MORFEO - Contratto ASI prot. n. 6003 del 31/07/2006 (2007) “MOnitoraggio Rischio da Frane con dati EO”, http://www.morfeoproject.it http://www.morfeoproject.it

  • Niell AE, Coster AJ, Solheim FS, Mendes VB, Toor PC, Langley RB, Upham CA (2001) Comparison of measurements of atmospheric wet delay by radiosonde, water vapor radiometer, GPS, and VLBI. J Atmos Ocean Tech 18(6):830–850

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Notarpietro R, Cucca M, Gabella M, Venuti G, Perona G (2011) Tomographic reconstruction of wet and total refractivity fields from GNSS receiver networks. Adv Space Res 47:898–912

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Onn F (2006) Modeling water vapor using GPS with application to mitigating inSAR atmospheric distorsions. Dissertation, Stanford University

  • Pierdicca N, Rocca F, Rommen B, Basili P, Bonafoni S, Cimini D, Ciotti P, Consalvi F, Ferretti R, Foster W, Marzano FS, Mattioli V, Mazzoni A, Montopoli M, Notarpietro R, Padmanabhan S, Perissin D, Pichelli E, Reising S, Sahoo S, Venuti G (2009) Atmospheric water vapour effects on spaceborne interferometric SAR imaging: comparison with ground based measurements and meteorological model simulations at different scales. In: 2009 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, IGARSS 2009. IEEE, pp V-320-V-323

  • Pierdicca N, Rocca F, Basili P, Bonafoni S, Carlesimo G, Cimini D, Ciotti P, Ferretti R, Marzano FS, Mattioli V, Montopoli M, Notarpietro R, Perissin D, Pichelli E, Rommen B, Venuti G (2011) Synergic use of EO, NWP and ground based measurements for the mitigation of vapour artefacts in SAR interferometry. In: 2011 IEEE International Geoscience and remote sensing symposium (IGARSS). IEEE, pp 2566–2569

  • Perissin D, Rocca F, Pierdicca N, Cimini D, Pichelli E, Venuti G, Rommen B (2011) Mitigation of atmospheric delay in inSAR: The ESA Metawave project. In: 2011 IEEE international Geoscience and remote sensing symposium (IGARSS). IEEE, pp 2558–2561

  • Princea SD, Goetza SJ, Dubayaha RO, Czajkowskia KP, Thawleya M (1998) Inference of surface and air temperature, atmospheric precipitable water and vapour pressure deficit using advanced very high-resolution radiometer satellite observations: comparison with field observations. J Hydrol 212-213:230–249

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Resch GM (1984) Water vapor radiometry in geodetic applications. In: Brunner FK (ed) Geodetic refraction. Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg

  • Sato K, Realini E, Tsuda T, Oigawa M, Iwaki Y, Shoji Y, Seko H (2013) A high-resolution, precipitable water vapor monitoring system using a dense network of GNSS receivers. J Disaster Res 8(1):37–47

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seeber G (2003) Satellite geodesy. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shoji Y, Nakamura H, Iwabuchi T, Aonashi K, Seko H, Mishima K, Ohtani R (2004a) Tsukuba GPS dense net campaign observation: improvement in GPS analysis of slant path delay by stacking one-way postfit phase residuals. J Meteor Soc Japan 82(1B):301–314

  • Shoji Y, Yamauchi H, Mashiko W, Sato E (2014b) Estimation of Local-scale Precipitable Water Vapor Distribution Around Each GNSS Station using Slant Path Delay. SOLA 10:29–33

  • Saito K, Shoji Y, Origuchi S, Duc L (2017) GPS PWV Assimilation with the JMA Nonhydrostatic 4DVAR and Cloud Resolving Ensemble Forecast for the 2008 August Tokyo Metropolitan Area Local Heavy Rainfalls. Data Assimilation for Atmospheric, Oceanic and Hydrologic Applications (Vol III), pp 383–404

  • Teunissen P J G, Kleusberg A (eds) (1998) GPS For geodesy. Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg

  • Tikhonov AN (1966) Regularization of incorrectly posed problems. Sov Math Dokl 1963 4:1624–1627

    Google Scholar 

  • Tregoning P, Boers R, O’Brien D, Hendy M (1998) Accuracy of absolute precipitable water vapor estimates from GPS observations. J Geophys Res: Atmos 103(D22):28701–28710

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Visconti MG (2009) L’esperimento MisT: stima dei ritardi troposferici da una rete GNSS locale. PhD dissertation, Politecnico di Milano

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Dr. Grazia Visconti and Prof. Ludovico Biagi who collected and firstly analysed the data and Leica Geosystem Italy for providing the GNSS stations for the MisT experiment. We thank Dr. Daniele Sampietro for his suggestions in the results analysis and the anonymous referees for their important comments on the manuscript that allowed us to improve it significantly.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IEIIT-CNR, Via De Marini 6, Genova, Italy

    Alessandro Fermi

  2. Geomatics Research and Development (GReD) srl, via Cavour 2, Lomazzo, Como, Italy

    Eugenio Realini

  3. Politecnico di Milano (DICA/GEOlab), Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milan, Italy

    Giovanna Venuti

Authors
  1. Alessandro Fermi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Eugenio Realini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Giovanna Venuti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

AF, ER and GV designed the study, developed the methodology, collected the data, performed the analysis, and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giovanna Venuti.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Authors’ information

AF, PhD in mathematics, PhD in Geodesy and Geomatics at Politecnico di Milano, is currently working as research fellow for the Italian National Research Council, CNR - IEIIT. ER, PhD in Geodesy and Geomatics, is working for Geomatics Research & Development srl (GReD), spin-off of Politecnico di Milano. GV is Associate Professor in Geospatial data analysis and responsible for the Geomatics and Earth observation laboratory (GEOlab) at Politecnico di Milano .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fermi, A., Realini, E. & Venuti, G. The impact of relative and absolute GNSS positioning strategies on estimated coordinates and ZWD in the framework of meteorological applications. Appl Geomat 11, 25–38 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12518-018-0234-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12518-018-0234-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation