Zenith Tropospheric Delay Estimation Using a Low-Cost GNSS

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are widely used in many fields such as surveying, navigation, meteorological studies, and other geomatic applications. Although high-performance GNSS receivers are widely used for GNSS applications, interest in low-cost GNSS receivers has increased in recent years and has become a research point. Many studies are realized to investigate the usability and performance of GNSS receivers with these properties. One of the topics to be investigated due to the ubiquity of low-cost receivers is the Zenith Tropospheric Delay (ZTD). This paper aims to test whether low-cost GNSS receivers can provide tropospheric parameters with close accuracy to high-performance GNSS receivers. For this reason, dual-frequency low-cost u-blox F9P GNSS receivers and CHC P5 geodetic GNSS receivers were chosen in the study. RINEX observation files of 4 days with a data recording interval of 30 seconds were obtained with chosen receivers. These observation files were processed with CSRS-PPP, one of the internet-based PPP services, and tropospheric parameters were estimated for the relevant days. ZTD values obtained from u-blox F9P GNSS receiver and geodetic receiver were examined with a comparative approach.