A comment on the article “A collinearity diagnosis of the GNSS geocenter determination” by P. Rebischung, Z. Altamimi, and T. Springer

Meindl, Michael; Beutler, Gerhard; Thaller, Daniela; Dach, Rolf; Schaer, Stefan; Jäggi, Adrian (2015). A comment on the article “A collinearity diagnosis of the GNSS geocenter determination” by P. Rebischung, Z. Altamimi, and T. Springer. Journal of geodesy, 89(2), pp. 189-194. Springer 10.1007/s00190-014-0765-1

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Meindl et al. (Adv Space Res 51(7):1047–1064, 2013) showed that the geocenter z -component estimated from observations of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) is strongly correlated to a particular parameter of the solar radiation pressure (SRP) model developed by Beutler et al. (Manuscr Geod 19:367–386, 1994). They analyzed the forces caused by SRP and the impact on the satellites’ orbits. The authors achieved their results using perturbation theory and celestial mechanics. Rebischung et al. (J Geod doi:10.1016/j.asr.2012.10.026, 2013) also deal with the geocenter determination with GNSS. The authors carried out a collinearity diagnosis of the associated parameter estimation problem. They conclude “without much exaggerating that current GNSS are insensitive to any component of geocenter motion”. They explain this inability by the high degree of collinearity of the geocenter coordinates mainly with satellite clock corrections. Based on these results and additional experiments, they state that the conclusions drawn by Meindl et al. (Adv Space Res 51(7):1047–1064, 2013) are questionable. We do not agree with these conclusions and present our arguments in this article. In the first part, we review and highlight the main characteristics of the studies performed by Meindl et al. (Adv Space Res 51(7):1047–1064, 2013) to show that the experiments are quite different from those performed by Rebischung et al. (J Geod doi:10.1016/j.asr.2012.10.026,2013) . In the second part, we show that normal equation (NEQ) systems are regular when estimating geocenter coordinates, implying that the covariance matrices associated with the NEQ systems may be used to assess the sensitivity to geocenter coordinates in a standard way. The sensitivity of GNSS to the components of the geocenter is discussed. Finally, we comment on the arguments raised by Rebischung et al. (J Geod doi:10.1016/j.asr.2012.10.026, 2013) against the results of Meindl et al. (Adv Space Res 51(7):1047–1064, 2013).

Item Type:

Journal Article (Further Contribution)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Astronomy
08 Faculty of Science > Other Institutions > Emeriti, Faculty of Science

UniBE Contributor:

Meindl, Michael, Beutler, Gerhard, Thaller, Daniela, Dach, Rolf, Schaer, Stefan, Jäggi, Adrian

Subjects:

500 Science > 520 Astronomy

ISSN:

0949-7714

Publisher:

Springer

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pierre Fridez

Date Deposited:

27 Apr 2015 10:51

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2023 23:26

Publisher DOI:

10.1007/s00190-014-0765-1

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.67097

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/67097

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