Improving GNSS Zenith Wet Delay Interpolation by Utilizing Tropospheric Gradients: Experiments with a Dense Station Network in Central Europe in the Warm Season
1
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
2
Geodetic Observatory Pecný, Research Institute of Geodesy, Topography and Cartography, 250 66 Zdiby, Czech Republic
3
Department of Geoinformatics, VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava, 708 33 Ostrava, Czech Republic
4
Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science, Technical University of Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(6), 674; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11060674
Received: 1 February 2019 / Revised: 12 March 2019 / Accepted: 19 March 2019 / Published: 21 March 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue High-precision GNSS: Methods, Open Problems and Geoscience Applications)
The Benchmark data set collected within the European COST Action ES1206 has aimed to support the development and validation of advanced Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) tropospheric products, in particular high-resolution zenith delays and tropospheric gradients. In this work we utilize this unique data set to show that the interpolation of GNSS Zenith Wet Delays (ZWDs) can be improved by utilizing tropospheric gradients. To do this we first prove the concept with simulated observations, that is, zenith delays and tropospheric gradients derived from a Numerical Weather Model. We show how tropospheric gradients can be converted to ZWD gradients. Then the ZWD gradients together with the ZWDs at selected reference stations are used in an inverse distance weighting interpolation scheme to estimate the ZWD at some target station. For a station configuration with an average station distance of 50 km in Germany and a period of two months (May and June 2013), we find an improvement of 20% in interpolated ZWDs when tropospheric gradients are taken into account. Next, we replace the simulated by real observations, that is, zenith delays and tropospheric gradients from a Precise Point Positioning (PPP) solution provided with the G-Nut/Tefnut analysis software. Here we find an improvement of 10% in interpolated ZWDs when tropospheric gradients are taken into account.
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Keywords:
GNSS; zenith wet delay; tropospheric gradient; numerical weather prediction model; interpolation
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Zus, F.; Douša, J.; Kačmařík, M.; Václavovic, P.; Balidakis, K.; Dick, G.; Wickert, J. Improving GNSS Zenith Wet Delay Interpolation by Utilizing Tropospheric Gradients: Experiments with a Dense Station Network in Central Europe in the Warm Season. Remote Sens. 2019, 11, 674.
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