A New Tropospheric Delay Model For

Abstract

GPS can play an important role in high-altitude vehicle positioning. In such GPS applications the residual tropospheric delay in GPS measurements is a major error source. Several strategies for estimating the residual zenith tropospheric delay have been described in the scientific literature. In general, such models incorporate the timevarying residual tropospheric errors within the stochastic models, which are then estimated using a Kalman filter. However, these methods have not considered the height difference between GPS receivers. In this paper, a new functional model for tropospheric delay is proposed. The error of the meteorological data measured at a ground reference site is estimated by Kalman filtering. Analytical results of a flight experiment indicate that the proposed model is indeed superior to the standard models. The new model can compensate for errors of meteorological data, and is feasible for use in precise positioning of high-altitude receiver platforms