A novel, optimized approach of voxel division for water vapor tomography

Abstract

Water vapor information with highly spatial and temporal resolution can be acquired using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) water vapor tomography technique. Usually, the targeted tomographic area is discretized into a number of voxels and the water vapor distribution can be reconstructed using a large number of GNSS signals which penetrate the entire tomographic area. Due to the influence of geographic distribution of receivers and geometric location of satellite constellation, many voxels located at the bottom and the side of research area are not crossed by signals, which would undermine the quality of tomographic result. To alleviate this problem, a novel, optimized approach of voxel division is here proposed which increases the number of voxels crossed by signals. On the vertical axis, a 3D water vapor profile is utilized, which is derived from radiosonde data for many years, to identify the maximum height of tomography space. On the horizontal axis, the total number of voxel crossed by signal is enhanced, based on the concept of non-uniform symmetrical division of horizontal voxels. In this study, tomographic experiments are implemented using GPS data from Hong Kong Satellite Positioning Reference Station Network, and tomographic result is compared with water vapor derived from radiosonde and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). The result shows that the Integrated Water Vapour (IWV), RMS, and error distribution of the proposed approach are better than that of traditional method.