Possible high-mobility LAGEOS ranging station

Abstract

A relatively low-cost system for determining both the vertical and horizontal coordinates of several dozen points per year with an accuracy of about 2 cm appears feasible. One approach considered is to use a subnanosecond pulse length laser with a few millijoules per pulse output energy and to employ single photoelectron detection of the returned signal. The single photoelectron approach has been thoroughly tested in the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment. With a laser average power of about 50 mW, a 30-cm diameter transmit-receive aperture, 10 arc sec pointing accuracy and a beam divergence of 20 arc sec, the expected returned signal level is about 70 pulses in a 3-min interval. If the differences between the observed ranges and those calculated from a reasonably good LAGEOS ephemeris over a 3-min interval are considered, the expected standard deviation of the mean is < 0.7 cm. The calibration procedure used in lunar ranging appears capable of reducing any bias due to the photomultiplier or timing system to 0.5 cm. The other main error source we have considered for the measured optical transit time is a possible difference in arrival time in different parts of the far field pattern because of laser mode structure. This effect needs to be checked experimentally, but we expect it to be 0.5 cm or less for a laser pulse length of about 200 psec. Based on these error estimates, simulations for one week of observations from the high-mobility station have been carried out for us at the National Geodetic Survey. When a refraction model error of 0.15% was used, the uncertainty of the high-mobility station position with respect to a reference station 500 km away was found to be 2.4 cm or less in each coordinate. After the gravity-field uncertainties have been reduced, the station location accuracy will be improved further and the limitation of measuring with respect to a regional reference station can be relaxed.