An experiment of GNSS-based single-station tropospheric refractivity profile inversion

Abstract

The retrieval of tropospheric refractivity profiles based on GNSS signals has significant advantages in terms of temporal and spatial resolution, operability, and equipment cost. This work presents an experiment of GNSS-based single-station tropospheric refractivity profile inversion at the coast area of Qingdao. The satellite broadcast ephemeris, clock error, and corresponding correction data are used to carry out real-time Precise Point Positioning to extract the observed GNSS tropospheric slant path delays, then ray-tracing simulations are exploited to calculate the corresponding theoretical GNSS tropospheric slant path delays, and finally the NSGA-II algorithm is used to perform multi-objective optimization to inverse the tropospheric atmospheric refractivity profile. The comparison results with nearby radiosonde data show that operational GNSS-based tropospheric refractivity profile retrieval is feasible, and further improvement is still needed on inversion accuracy in the coastal area.