This paper summarizes the activity of the chosen Polish geodetic research teams in 2015–2018 in the fields of Earth: rotation, dynamics as well as magnetic field. It has been prepared for the needs of the presentation on the 27th International Union of Geodesy and Geodynamics General Assembly, Montreal, Canada. The part concerning Earth rotation is mostly focused on the use of modelling of diurnal and subdiurnal components of Earth rotation by including low frequency components of polar motion and UT1 in the analysis, study of free oscillations in Earth rotation derived from both space-geodetic observations of polar motion and the time variation of the second degree gravitational field coefficients derived from Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) observations, new methods of monitoring of Earth rotation, as well as studies on applications of the Ring Laser Gyroscope (RLG) for direct and continuous measurements of changes in Earth rotation and investigations of the hydrological excitation of polar motion. Much attention was devoted to the GRACE-derived gravity for explaining the influence of surface mass redistributions on polar motion. Monitoring of the geodynamical phenomena is divided into study on local and regional dynamics using permanent observations, investigation on tidal phenomena, as well as research on hydrological processes and sea level variation parts. Finally, the recent research conducted by Polish scientists on the Earth’s magnetic field is described.
Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) was established in 2003 by the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) with the main goal to deepen understanding of the dynamic Earth system by quantifying human-induced Earth’s changes in space and time. GGOS allows not only for advancing Earth Science, including solid Earth, oceans, ice, atmosphere, but also for better understanding processes between different constituents forming the system Earth, and most importantly, for helping authorities to make intelligent societal decisions. GGOS comprises different components to provide the geodetic infrastructure necessary for monitoring the Earth system and global changes. The infrastructure spread from the global scale, through regional, to national scales. This contribution describes the GGOS structure, components, and goals with the main focus on GGOS activities in Poland, including both the development of the geodetic observing infrastructure as well as advances in processing geodetic observations supporting GGOS goals and providing high-accuracy global geodetic parameters.
Position time series from permanent Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations are commonly used for estimating secular velocities of discrete points on the Earth’s surface. An understanding of background noise in the GNSS position time series is essential to obtain realistic estimates of velocity uncertainties. The current study focuses on the investigation of background noise in position time series obtained from thirteen permanent GNSS stations located in Nepal Himalaya using the spectral analysis method. The power spectrum of the GNSS position time series has been estimated using the Lomb–Scargle method. The iterative nonlinear Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm has been applied to estimate the spectral index of the power spectrum. The power spectrum can be described by white noise in the high frequency zone and power law noise in the lower frequency zone. The mean and the standard deviation of the estimated spectral indices are −1.46±0.14,−1.39±0.16 and −1.53±0.07 for north, east and vertical components, respectively. On average, the power law noise extends up to a period of ca. 21 days. For a shorter period, i.e. less than ca. 21 days, the spectra are white. The spectral index corresponding to random walk noise (ca. –2) is obtained for a site located above the base of a seismogenic zone which can be due to the combined effect of tectonic and nontectonic factors rather than a spurious monumental motion. Overall, the usefulness of investigating the background noise in the GNSS position time series is discussed.
In this study, several variants create and choose of a local quasi-geoid model in Poland have been considered. All propositions have a source in European Gravimetric Geoid models – EGG2008 and EGG2015, which are purely gravimetric models of reference surface. In the course of this work, each model has been analyzed in various ways: without any corrections, by parallel shifting of residuals, by the 7-parameter conformal transformation and by fitting residuals by 4- and 5-parameter trigonometric polynomials. Eventual corrections were based on points of national GNSS/levelling networks (EUVN, EUVN_DA, POLREF, EUREF and ASG-EUPOS eccentric points). As a final result of this study, a comparison of the accuracy of selected models has been carried out by RMSE statistics and maps showing spatial distribution of residuals and histograms. Validation has shown that the maximum achievable accuracy of the EGG models is approximately 2 cm for the ETRF2000 reference system and approximately 8 cm for ETRF89. In turn, fitting with the use of different mathematical methods results in an improvement of the standard deviation of residues to the level of 1.3–1.4 cm. The conclusions include an evaluation of considerations for and against the use of models based only on EGG realizations and, on the other hand, fitted to the points of Polish vertical network. Its usefulness is strictly connected with needs of the definition of up to date quasi-geoid model for the new realization of heights system in Poland, based on EVRF2007 frame.
This review paper presents research results on geodetic positioning and applications carried out in Poland, and related to the activities of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) Commission 4 “Positioning and Applications” and its working groups. It also constitutes the chapter 4 of the national report of Poland for the International Union of Geodesy and Geodynamics (IUGG) covering the period of 2015-2018. The paper presents selected research, reviewed and summarized here, that were carried out at leading Polish research institutions, and is concerned with the precise multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) satellite positioning and also GNSS-based ionosphere and troposphere modelling and studies. The research, primarily carried out within working groups of the IAG Commission 4, resulted in important advancements that were published in leading scientific journals. During the review period, Polish research groups carried out studies on multi-GNSS functional positioning models for both relative and absolute solutions, stochastic positioning models, new carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution methods, inter system bias calibration, high-rate GNSS applications, monitoring terrestrial reference frames with GNSS, assessment of the real-time precise satellite orbits and clocks, advances in troposphere and ionosphere GNSS remote sensing methods and models, and also their applications to weather, space weather and climate studies.
GNSS systems are susceptible to radio interference despite then operating in a spread spectrum. The commerce jammers power up to 2 watts that can block the receiver function at a distance of up to 15 kilometers in free space. Two original methods for GNSS receiver testing were developed. The first method is based on the usage of a GNSS simulator for generation of the satellite signals and a vector signal RF generator for generating different types of interference signals. The second software radio method is based on a software GNSS simulator and a signal processing in Matlab. The receivers were tested for narrowband CW interference, FM modulated signal and chirp jamming signals and scenarios. The signal to noise ratio usually drops down to 27 dBc-Hz while the jamming to signal ratio is different for different types of interference. The chirp signal is very effective. The jammer signal is well propagated in free space while in the real mobile urban and suburban environment it is usually strongly attenuated.
The advance of MEMS-based inertial sensors successfully expands their applications to small unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAV), thus resulting in the challenge of reliable and accurate in-flight alignment for airborne
MEMS-based inertial navigation system (INS). In order to strengthen the rapid response capability
for UAVs, this paper proposes a robust in-flight alignment scheme for airborne MEMS-INS aided by global
navigation satellite system (GNSS). Aggravated by noisy MEMS sensors and complicated flight dynamics,
a rotation-vector-based attitude determination method is devised to tackle the in-flight coarse alignment
problem, and the technique of innovation-based robust Kalman filtering is used to handle the adverse impacts
of measurement outliers in GNSS solutions. The results of flight test have indicated that the proposed
alignment approach can accomplish accurate and reliable in-flight alignment in cases of measurement outliers,
which has a significant performance improvement compared with its traditional counterparts.
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