Optimized strategy analysis on retrieval of GPS precipitable water vapor

This paper mainly discusses how to determine the optimized strategy for retrieval of Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) with high accuracy from tropospheric zenith wet delay using ground-based GPS receivers. GPS analytical network are constructed on the base of two observation sites in Antarctica in 1999 and several IGS sites. Tests are conducted to study the performance of different network sizes and different schemes parameters. A high-accuracy GPS processing software package GAMIT/GLOBK is utilized; multiple schemes are adopted for searching the optimized parameters for accurate PWV. After having running GAMIT/GLOBK of all test combination, the results are analyzed by Baseline Repeatability Rate(BRR) and bias between calculated GPS water vapor and actual water vapor. The primary achievements and conclusion are reached including the optimal IGS sites involved, network configurations, elevation cut-off angles, processing periods, knots position.