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Determination of a terrestrial reference frame via Kalman filtering of very long baseline interferometry data

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An Erratum to this article was published on 12 September 2016

Abstract

Terrestrial reference frames (TRF), such as the ITRF2008, are primary products of geodesy. In this paper, we present TRF solutions based on Kalman filtering of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) data, for which we estimate steady station coordinates over more than 30 years that are updated for every single VLBI session. By applying different levels of process noise, non-linear signals, such as seasonal and seismic effects, are taken into account. The corresponding stochastic model is derived site-dependent from geophysical loading deformation time series and is adapted during periods of post-seismic deformations. Our results demonstrate that the choice of stochastic process has a much smaller impact on the coordinate time series and velocities than the overall noise level. If process noise is applied, tests with and without additionally estimating seasonal signals indicate no difference between the resulting coordinate time series for periods when observational data are available. In a comparison with epoch reference frames, the Kalman filter solutions provide better short-term stability. Furthermore, we find out that the Kalman filter solutions are of similar quality when compared to a consistent least-squares solution, however, with the enhanced attribute of being easier to update as, for instance, in a post-earthquake period.

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Notes

  1. http://itrf.ign.fr/ITRF_solutions/2014/.

  2. http://massloading.net.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the IVS for scheduling, observing, correlating, and providing the VLBI data used in this work. We thank the IMLS (http://massloading.net) for making publicly available the loading data used in this work and the IERS combination center at IGN for maintaining the ITRF. Benedikt Soja works under FWF Project P 24187-N21. Furthermore, the authors want to thank the associate editor and three anonymous reviewers who helped to improve the quality of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany

    Benedikt Soja, Tobias Nilsson, Robert Heinkelmann & Harald Schuh

  2. Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Kyriakos Balidakis, Susanne Glaser & Harald Schuh

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  1. Benedikt Soja
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  2. Tobias Nilsson
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  3. Kyriakos Balidakis
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  4. Susanne Glaser
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  5. Robert Heinkelmann
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  6. Harald Schuh
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Correspondence to Benedikt Soja.

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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00190-016-0953-2.

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Soja, B., Nilsson, T., Balidakis, K. et al. Determination of a terrestrial reference frame via Kalman filtering of very long baseline interferometry data. J Geod 90, 1311–1327 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-016-0924-7

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