Impact of GPS Antenna Phase Center Models on Zenith Wet Delay and Tropospheric Gradients

We demonstrate the potential for the Global Positioning System (GPS) to provide highly accurate tropospheric products for use in meteorological applications. Tropospheric products, in particular the wet delays, are treated as an unknown parameter in GPS processing and are estimated with other parameters such as station coordinates. In this study, we investigate the effects of Phase Center Correction (PCC) models on tropospheric zenith wet delay (ZWD), integrated water vapor (IWV) and gradient products. Two solutions were generated using the GAMIT software over the EUREF Permanent GNSS Network (EPN). The first (reference) solution was derived by applying the International GNSS Service (IGS) type-mean PCC model, while for the second solution PCC models from individual calibrations were used. The solutions were generated identically, except for the PCC model differences. The two solutions were compared, with the assumption that common signals are differenced out. The comparison of the two solutions clearly shows a bias in all tropospheric products, which can be attributed to PCC model deficiencies. Overall, mean biases of ±1.8, ±0.3, ±0.14 and ±0.19 mm are evident in ZWD, IWV, North-South and East-West gradients, respectively. Moreover, the differences between the two solutions show seasonal variations. For all antenna types, the ZWD and IWV differences are dominated by white plus power-law noise, with latter characterizing the low-frequency spectrum. On the other hand, the horizontal gradients exhibit a white plus first order autoregressive noise characteristic with less than 1% white noise. The individual PCC model provides a better fit to an external independent model in terms of gradient estimate and also provides up to 3 % more carrier phase ambiguity resolution.