Atmospheric turbulence theory applied to GPS carrier-phase data

authored by

Steffen Schön, Fritz K. Brunner

Abstract

Turbulent irregularities in the lower atmosphere cause physical correlations between Global Positioning System (GPS) carrier-phase measurements. Based on turbulence theory, a variance-covariance model is developed in this paper that reflects these correlations. The main result shows that the obtained fully-populated variance-covariance matrices depend not only on the satellite-station geometry, but also on the prevailing atmospheric conditions, which are parameterised by, e.g., the von Karman spectrum of refractivity fluctuations and the wind velocity vector. It is shown that the amount of the correlation between two GPS carrier-phase observations is inversely related to the separation distance of the corresponding ray paths through the turbulent atmosphere. Furthermore, the wind velocity and direction play a key role in the correlation.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Geodesy

External Organisation(s)

Graz University of Technology

Type

Article

Journal

Journal of geodesy

Volume

82

Pages

47-57

No. of pages

11

ISSN

0949-7714

Publication date

20.04.2007

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geophysics, Geochemistry and Petrology, Computers in Earth Sciences

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-007-0156-y (Access: Unknown)

 

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