Spatial error correlation of GPS atmospheres as determined from simulations

Abstract We have made Monte Carlo simulations in order to quantify the influence of several error sources on the atmospheric delay derived in our regular “Precise Point Positioning” analysis of GPS data. Satellite position and clock errors were found to be the greatest sources of error. The RMS size of the atmospheric delay error due to these sources is suggested to be 4–8 mm, and the correlation of the delay error over 1000 km is 0.5-0.7. In our real-time analysis of the atmospheric delay satellite orbits and clock offsets are modelled in the Kalman filter. The modelled errors suggest an uncertainty in the atmospheric delay of 10–13 mm, and a decrease in the correlation coefficients to about 0.65 over a distance of 1000 km. For both the Precise Point Positioning and the real-time analysis the influence from antenna signal scatter will give additional error contributions.