Performance analysis of NOAA tropospheric signal delay model

Abstract

Tropospheric delay is one of the dominant global positioning system (GPS) errors, which degrades the positioning accuracy. Recent development in tropospheric modeling relies on implementation of more accurate numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. In North America one of the NWP-based tropospheric correction models is the NOAA Tropospheric Signal Delay Model (NOAATrop), which was developed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Because of its potential to improve the GPS positioning accuracy, the NOAATrop model became the focus of many researchers. In this paper, we analyzed the performance of the NOAATrop model and examined its effect on ionosphere-free-based precise point positioning (PPP) solution. We generated 3 year long tropospheric zenith total delay (ZTD) data series for the NOAATrop model, Hopfield model, and the International GNSS Services (IGS) final tropospheric correction product, respectively. These data sets were generated at ten IGS reference stations spanning Canada and the United States. We analyzed the NOAATrop ZTD data series and compared them with those of the Hopfield model. The IGS final tropospheric product was used as a reference. The analysis shows that the performance of the NOAATrop model is a function of both season (time of the year) and geographical location. However, its performance was superior to the Hopfield model in all cases. We further investigated the effect of implementing the NOAATrop model on the ionosphere-free-based PPP solution convergence and accuracy. It is shown that the use of the NOAATrop model improved the PPP solution convergence by 1%, 10% and 15% for the latitude, longitude and height components, respectively.