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Monitoring precipitable water vapor in real-time using global navigation satellite systems

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Abstract

This paper addresses real-time monitoring of the precipitable water vapor (PWV) from GNSS measurements and presents some results obtained from 6-month long GNSS PWV experiments using international and domestic GNSS networks. In the real-time GNSS PWV monitoring system a server/client structure is employed to facilitate formation of PWV networks and single-differenced GNSS measurements are utilized to mitigate errors in GNSS satellites’ orbits and clocks. An issue relating to baseline length between the server and clients is discussed in detail and as a result the PWV monitor is configured to perform in two modes depending on the baseline length. The server estimates sequentially the zenith wet delay of the individual stations, which is then converted into the PWV of the stations. We evaluate system performance by comparing the real-time PWV solution with reference solutions including meteorological measurements obtained with radiosondes and deferred-time precision GNSS PWV solutions. Results showed that the standard deviation of difference between the real-time PWV and the reference solutions ranged from 2.1 to 3.4 mm in PWV for a 6-month long comparison, which was improved to 1.4 to 2.9 mm by reducing comparison period to 20 days in winter.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor, associate editor and four anonymous reviewers for providing constructive suggestions and helpful comments to improve the manuscript. This research was supported by the Korea Meteorological Administration R&D program under Grant CATER 2012-6150.

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Correspondence to Seung-Woo Lee.

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Lee, SW., Kouba, J., Schutz, B. et al. Monitoring precipitable water vapor in real-time using global navigation satellite systems. J Geod 87, 923–934 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-013-0655-y

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