The impact of surface meteorological measurements on GPS height determination

Positioning accuracy by the Global Positioning System (GPS) is of great concern in a variety of research tasks. It is limited due to error sources such as ionospheric effect, orbital uncertainty, antenna phase center variation, signal multipath, and tropospheric influence. In this study, the tropospheric influence, primarily due to water vapor inhomogeneity, on GPS positioning height is investigated. The data collected by the GPS receivers along with co-located surface meteorological instruments in 2003 are utilized. The GPS receivers are established as continuous operating reference stations by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), Central Weather Bureau (CWB), and Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan, and International GNSS Service (IGS). The total number of GPS receivers is 21. The surface meteorological measurements include temperature, pressure, and humidity. They are introduced to GPS data processing with 24 tropospheric parameters for the station heights, which are compared with those obtained without a priori knowledge of surface meteorological measurements. The results suggest that surface meteorological measurements have an expected impact on the GPS height. The daily correction maximum with the meteorological effect may be as large as 9.3 mm for the cases of concern.