Stochastic modeling of high-stability ground clocks in GPS analysis

Abstract

In current global positioning system (GPS) applications, receiver clocks are typically estimated epoch-wise in the data analyses even for clocks with high performance like Hydrogen-masers (H-maser). Applying an appropriate clock model for high-stability receiver clocks should, in view of the strong correlation between the station height and the clock parameters, significantly improve the positioning results. Recent experiments have shown that modeling the deterministic behavior of high-quality receiver clocks can improve the kinematic precise point positioning considerably. In this paper, well-behaving ground clocks are studied in detail applying constraints between subsequent and near-subsequent clock parameters. The influence of different weights for these relative clock constraints on the positioning quality, especially on the height, is investigated. For excellent clocks, an improvement of up to a factor of 3 can be obtained for the repeatability of the kinematic height estimates. This may be essential to detect small but sudden changes in the vertical component (e.g., caused by earthquakes). Troposphere zenith path delays (ZPD) are also heavily correlated with the receiver clock estimates and station heights. All these parameters are usually estimated simultaneously. We show that the use of relative clock constraints allows for a higher time resolution of the ZPD estimates (smaller than 2 h) without compromising the quality of the kinematic height estimates.