Improving VLBI analysis by tropospheric ties in GNSS and VLBI integrated processing

Abstract

Tropospheric delay modeling is challenging in high-precision Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) analysis due to the rapid water vapor variation and imperfect observation geometry, where observations from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) co-locations can enhance the VLBI analysis. We investigate the impact of tropospheric ties in the VLBI and GNSS integrated processing during the CONT05–CONT17 campaigns, and present a method that automatically handles the systematic tropospheric tie biases. Applying tropospheric ties at VLBI–GNSS co-locations enhances the observation geometry and improves the solution reliability. The VLBI network is stabilized, with station coordinate repeatability improved by 12% horizontally and by 28% vertically, and the network scale improved by 32%. The Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) improve by up to 20%. Both zenith delay and gradient ties contribute to the improvement of EOP, whereas the gradient ties contribute mainly to the improvement of length of day and celestial pole offsets.