Table Of ContentInternational Association of Geodesy Symposia
Wolfgang Torge, Series Editor
International Association of Geodesy Symposia
Wolfgang Torge, Series Editor
Symposium 101: Global and Regional Geodynamics
Symposium 102: Global Positioning System: An Overview
Symposium 103: Gravity, Gradiometry, and Gravimetry
Symposium 104: Sea Surface Topography and the Geoid
Symposium 105: Earth Rotation and Coordinate Reference Frames
Symposium 106: Determination of the Geoid: Present and Future
Symposium 107: Kinematic Systems in Geodesy, Surveying, and Remote Sensing
Symposium 108: Applications of Geodesy to Engineering
Symposium 109: Permanent Satellite Tracking Networks for Geodesy to Engineering
Symposium 110: From Mars to Greenland: Charting Gravity with Space and Airborne Instruments
Symposium 111: Recent Geodetic and Gravimetric Research in Latin America
Symposium 112: Geodesy and Physics of the Earth: Geodetic Contributions to Geodynamics
Permanent
Satellite Tracking Networks
for Geodesy
and Geodynamics
Symposium No.109
Vienna, Austria, August 11-24, 1991
Convened and Edited by
Gerald L.Mader
Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg New York London
Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest
Gerald L. Mader
Ocean and Earth Sciences
Geosciences Laboratory
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Rockville, Maryland 20852
USA
Series Editor
Wolfgang Torge
Institut fUr Erdmessung
Universitat Hannover
Nienburger StraBe 6
30167 Hannover
Germany
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The papers presented in this volume are the result of an lAG symposium held during the XX General Assembly of the International Union
of Geodesy and Geophysics in Vienna, August 11-24, 1991
ISBN-13: 978-3-540-55827-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-77726-4
DOT: 10.1007/978-3-642-77726-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Permanent satellite tracking networks for geodesy and geodynamics: symposium
no. 109, Vienna, Austria, August 11-24, 1991 1c onvened and edited by Gerald L. Mader. p. cm. - (International Association of Geodesy
Symposia; symposium 109) proceedings of an lAG symposium held during the XX General Assembly of the international Union of
Geodesy and Geophysics in Vienna, Austria, August 11-24, 1991. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 3-540-55827-6 (berlin:
alk. paper). - ISBN 0-387-55827-6 (New York: alk. paper) 1. Astronautics in geodesy-Congresses. 2. Geodynamics-Congresses. 3.
Global Positioning System-Congresses. 1. mader, Gerald L. II. International Association of Geodesy. III. International Union of
Geodesy and Geophysics. General Assembly (20th: 1991: Vienna, Austria) IV. Series. QB296.AIP47 1993526' .1-dc20 93-2186
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Preface
These proceedings include many of the papers presented at the Symposium
on Permanent Satellite Tracking Networks for Geodesy and Geophysics held
in Vienna, Austria as part of the IUoo General Assembly and lAG meeting
during August, 1991. The symposium was convened to promote the estab
lishment of an International GPS Service under the auspices of the lAG. The
motivation for this initiative was best explained in a letter written by myself,
William Melbourne and Bernard Minster to Ivan Mueller. Excerpts from this
letter follow.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is becoming, and promises to remain
for some time, one of the most important geodetic measurement systems. The
contributions to date of GPS geodesy are truly revolutionary, encompassing
such diverse applications as measurememts of crustal deformation, precise
positioning of mobile platforms and monitoring of ionospheric conditions.
When one considers the accuracy obtainable with GPS and the relatively low
cost for acquiring this technology, the full impact of GPS over the next decade
is indeed very difficult to estimate.
Given this demonstrated capability of GPS, its economic advantages and
the easy accessibility of the receiver technology, we are certain that the use
of GPS will continue to proliferate as the dominant positioning technique of
geodesists and geophysicists throughout the world. Consequently, this means
that the availability of a permanent, reliable GPS Global Tracking System be
comes an important support function for the scientific community worldwide.
This also raises the important question of whether these activities should be
coordinated and conducted according to certain standards. We believe that they
should and we believe that lAG is the appropriate forum for such an effort.
Several GPS related activities have already begun within the lAG. These
include the CSTG GPS Subcommission and the more recently created GPS
Technique Coordinator for IERS. The GPS Subcommission has promoted the
establishment of CIGNET, the Cooperative International GPS NETwork, con
sistent with the VLBI/SLR reference frame and which provides a source of
data for the computation of GPS ephemerides. The Subcommission has also
endorsed a standard format for the exchange of GPS data. The GPS Technique
Coordinator for IERS has been tasked to organize the use of GPS for moni-
v
toring Earth orientation variability, for terrestrial reference frame maintenance
and alignment, and for coordinating the analysis effort needed to assess the
utility of GPS for these purposes. These activities are essential to the service
that we believe is needed by the international GPS community, however the
scope of the proposed service encompasses a broader area of effort.
The number of international GPS deployments with regional to global
perspective, yet not coordinated through the lAG, is also growing rapidly.
For example, numerous international campaigns addressing regional tectonic
problems around the Mediterranean, around the Caribbean and in Central and
South America, in the South Pacific, in Indonesia, Alaska, Tibet, etc., are in
various stages of execution under support from NSF, NASA, NOAA/NGS,
USGS, the World Bank, as well as various foreign organizations. Permanently
recording local and regional GPS networks are being deployed in Japan and
in Southern California. A global GPS tracking system is being developed by
NASA to support orbital missions and many of the ground campaigns cited
above. A number of regional networks are under development for ephemeris
control, for example, in Scandinavia, Japan and Australia. A mechanism for
coordinating these various efforts and their flow of data and data products
is urgently needed if the geodetic community as a whole is to derive all the
benefits that should be expected from the recent advances in the technology,
and if the scientific promise of GPS as a technique to study the earth is to be
fully realized.
We envision a permanent international GPS service with the lAG which
would promote GPS in the long term interests of the geodetic and geophysical
communities. This service would build upon a core global network of approxi
mately 20 permanent tracking stations. The service would provide information
and data products from computational centers that would be available to all
GPS users through data archive and exchange centers. The service would sup
port a number of activities, such as GPS orbit determination, earth orientation
and reference frame determination, absolute and relative frame determination
and remote sensing functions of spaceflight missions. The service would pub
lish its results in regular reports. The service would develop necessary stan
dards and encourage international adherence to the conventions. The service
would operate in conjunction with SLR, VLBI, and LLR and would provide
the GPS community with an interface to other space-based techniques such as
DORIS, PRARE, and GLRS. The service would include goals of and encour
age the ongoing developments undertaken by the CSTG GPS Subcommission
and the IERS, and the other network development activities cited earlier. The
service would recommend the process by which the geodetic control estab
lished by the core network of GPS fiducial stations should be densified by
VI
GPS at the regional and even local level. In this respect, the service should
be cognizant of and promote coordination between ongoing studies of dense
global networks of fiducial stations, including the NASA-sponsored Fiducial
Laboratories for an International Natural Science Network (FLINN), which
would comprise the global deployment of 200 permanent fiducial sites, and
also other global and regional geodetic/geophysical networks under develop
ment worldwide.
We propose that a working group be established as soon as practical to
define and examine the merits of such a service and develop a formal proposal
and detailed plan for its implementation. We request that the lAG schedule a
special GPS Symposium at the next General Assembly in Vienna in August
1991 where the results and detailed plans of the working group would be
presented.
The papers by Mueller, Minster, Schutz, Neilan, Mader and Melbourne
present an overview, background and summary of some of the efforts leading
to the establishment of this service. During the symposium, a proposal to the
lAG for such a service including a campaign during the summer of 1992 to
examine its operational feasibility, was presented and discussed. The sympo
sium endorsed the plans for an International GPS Service and the proposal
was subsequently presented to the lAG where it was adopted. The process of
formally establishing an International GPS Service within the lAG had begun.
Gerald L. lvlader
VII
Contents
Planning an International Service Using the Global Positioning System (GPS)
for Geodynamic Applications
1.1. Muller ............................................................ 1
Network Design Considerations for the International GPS Geodynamics
J.-B. Minster, M. Bevis, Y. Bock, C. Boucher, O. Colombo, B. Engen,
A.M. Finkelstein, H. Frey, B. Hager, T. Kato, S. Lichten, P. Morgan,
W. Prescott, C. Reigber, S. Rekkedal, B. Schutz, H. Tsuji, and V. Velikhov ... 23
GPS Network Operations for the International GPS Geodynamics Service
R.E. Neilan .......................................................... 33
IGS Data Analysis Panel Report
B.E. Schutz, P. Anderson, G. Beutler, J. Dow, R. King, S. Lichten,
E. Pavlis, M. Schenewerk, E. Swift, and H. Tsuji ......................... 47
CIGNET and NGS Orbit Production Experiences Related to the IGS
Gerald L. Mader ...................................................... 55
The First GPS IERS and Geodynamics Experiment - 1991
W.G. Melbourne, S.S. Fisher, R.E. Neilan, T.P. Yunck, B. Engen,
Ch. Reigber, and S. Tatevjan ........................................... 65
The Tyrgeonet Project
V. Achilli, M. Anzidei, P. Baldi, M. Marsella, G. Salemi, and F. Vespe ...... 81
Brazilian Network for Continuous Monitoring
of the Global Positioning System - RBMC
L.P. Souto Fortes ..................................................... 95
GPS Geodesy: The Contribution of the Australian Regional Tracking Network
C. Rizos, D. Grant, and P.-S. Hung .................................... 103
Modelling of Atmospheric Propagation Delays
on Single Frequency G PS Signals
K.A. Abdalla and H.H. Fashir ......................................... 113
IX
Global Plate Tectonics with Special Regard to European Region
Using Lageos Laser Ranging Data from 1983 to 1990
G. Gendt, H. Montag, and G. Dick ..................................... 121
The 1989 GPS Campaign in SW Turkey: Data Analysis
K. Heki, G.R. Foulger, O. Alp, and M. Ergii.n ........................... 131
Effects of Severe Ionospheric Conditions on GPS Data Processing
L. Wanninger and C.-B. Jahn ......................................... 141
GPS Orbit/Clock Estimation Based on Smoothed Pseudorange Data
from a Ten-Station Global Network
E.R. Swift .......................................................... 151
Japanese Regional GPS Tracking Network for Geodesy and Geodynamics
H. Tsuji and M. Murakami ............................................ 161
Regional Orbit Improvement Techniques
Applied to a Japanese Fixed-Point GPS Network
S. Shimada and Y. Bock .............................................. 167
NGS Second Generation ASCII and Binary Orbit Formats
and Associated Interpolation Studies
B. W. Remondi ...................................................... 177
Automized Preprocessing of GPS-Phase Data
U. Gehlich .......................................................... 187
x
PLANNING AN INTERNATIONAL SERVICE USING
THE GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM (GPS) FOR
GEODYNAMIC APPLICATIONS
Ivan I. Mueller
Dept. of Geodetic Science and Surveying
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1247 USA
MOTIVATION AND BACKGROUND
"Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here," said Alice.
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care," said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
LEWIS CARROLL
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is becoming, and promises to remain for some time,
one of the the most important geodetic measurement systems. The contributions to date of
GPS to geodesy and geophysics are truly revolutionary, encompassing such diverse
applications as measurements of crustal deformation, precise positioning of mobile
platforms and monitoring of ionospheric conditions. When one considers the accuracy
obtainable with GPS and the relatively low cost for acquiring this technology, the full
impact of GPS over the next decade is indeed very difficult to estimate.
Given this demonstrated capability of GPS, its economic advantages and the easy
accessibility of the receiver technology, it is certain that the use of GPS will continue to
proliferate as the dominant positioning technique of geodesists and geophysicists
throughout the world. This raises the important question of whether these activities should
be coordinated and conducted according to certain standards. It was believed that they
should and that the International Association of Geodesy (lAG) is the appropriate forum for
such an effort.
Several GPS related activities have already begun within the lAG. These include the
GPS Subcommission of Commission VIII-International Coordination of Space
Techniques for Geodesy and Geodynamics (CSTG), and the more recently created
(January 22, 1990) GPS Technique Coordinator for the International Earth Rotation
Service (IERS). The GPS Subcommission has promoted the establishment of CIGNET,
the Cooperative International GPS Network which provides a source of data for the
computation of GPS ephemerides. The Subcommission has also endorsed a standard
format for the exchange of GPS data. The GPS Technique Coordinator for the IERS has
been tasked to organize the use of GPS for monitoring Earth orientation variability, for
terrestrial reference frame maintenance and alignment, and for coordinating the analysis
effort needed to assess the utility of GPS for these purposes. Such activities are essential
for the international GPS community; however a broader perspective may be beneficial.
Such an approach was proposed at the lAG General Meeting in Edinburgh by Neilan,
Melbourne and Mader (1989).
1
