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Abstract. An extensive validation of line-of-sight tropospheric slant total delays (STD) from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), ray tracing in numerical weather prediction model (NWM) fields and microwave water vapour radiometer (WVR) is presented. Ten GNSS reference stations, including collocated sites, and almost 2 months of data from 2013, including severe weather events were used for comparison. Seven institutions delivered their STDs based on GNSS observations processed using 5 software programs and 11 strategies enabling to compare rather different solutions and to assess the impact of several aspects of the processing strategy. STDs from NWM ray tracing came from three institutions using three different NWMs and ray-tracing software. Inter-techniques evaluations demonstrated a good mutual agreement of various GNSS STD solutions compared to NWM and WVR STDs. The mean bias among GNSS solutions not considering post-fit residuals in STDs was −0.6 mm for STDs scaled in the zenith direction and the mean standard deviation was 3.7 mm. Standard deviations of comparisons between GNSS and NWM ray-tracing solutions were typically 10 mm ± 2 mm (scaled in the zenith direction), depending on the NWM model and the GNSS station. Comparing GNSS versus WVR STDs reached standard deviations of 12 mm ± 2 mm also scaled in the zenith direction. Impacts of raw GNSS post-fit residuals and cleaned residuals on optimal reconstructing of GNSS STDs were evaluated at intertechnique comparison and for GNSS at collocated sites. The use of raw post-fit residuals is not generally recommended as they might contain strong systematic effects, as demonstrated in the case of station LDB0. Simplified STDs reconstructed only from estimated GNSS tropospheric parameters, i.e. without applying post-fit residuals, performed the best in all the comparisons; however, it obviously missed part of tropospheric signals due to non-linear temporal and spatial variations in the troposphere. Although the post-fit residuals cleaned of visible systematic errors generally showed a slightly worse performance, they contained significant tropospheric signal on top of the simplified model. They are thus recommended for the reconstruction of STDs, particularly during high variability in the troposphere. Cleaned residuals also showed a stable performance during ordinary days while containing promising information about the troposphere at low-elevation angles.

Precise Point Positioning (PPP) is a wellknown technique of positioning by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that provides accurate solutions. With the availability of real-time precise orbit and clock products provided by the International GNSS Service (IGS) and by individual analysis centers such as Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales through the IGS Real-Time Project, PPP in real time is achievable. With such orbit and clock products and using dual-frequency receivers, first-order ionospheric effects can be eliminated by the ionospheric-free combination. Concerning the tropospheric delays, the Zenith Hydrostatic Delays can be quite well modeled, although the Zenith Wet Delays (ZWDs) have to be estimated because they cannot be mitigated by, for instance, observable combinations. However, adding ZWD estimates in PPP processing increases the time to achieve accurate positions. In order to reduce this convergence time, we (1) model the behavior of troposphere over France using ZWD estimates at Orphéon GNSS reference network stations and (2) send the modeling parameters to the GNSS users to be introduced as a priori ZWDs, with an appropriate uncertainty. At the user level, float PPP-RTK is achieved; that is, GNSS data are performed in kinematic mode and ambiguities are kept float. The quality of the modeling is assessed by comparison with tropospheric products published by Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière. Finally, the improvements in terms of required time to achieve 10-cm accuracy for the rover position (simulated float PPP-RTK) are quantified and discussed. Results for 68 % quantiles of absolute errors convergence show that gains for GPS-only positioning with ZWDs derived from the assessed tropospheric modeling are about: 1 % (East), 20 % (North), and 5 % (Up). Since ZWD estimation is correlated with satellite geometry, we also investigated the positioning when processing GPS ? GLONASS data, which increases significantly the number of available satellites. The improvements achieved by adding tropospheric corrections in this case are about: 2 % (East), 5 % (North), and 13 % (Up). Finally, a reduction in the number of reference stations by using a sparser network configuration to perform the tropospheric modeling does not degrade the generated tropospheric corrections, and similar performances are achieved.

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International audienceIn this paper we examine OTL displacements detected by GPS stations of a dedicated campaign and validate ocean tide models. Our area of study is the continental shelf of Brittany and Cotentin in France. Brittany is one of the few places in the world where tides provoke loading displacements of ∼10-12 cm vertically and a few cm horizontally. Ocean tide models suffer from important discrepancies in this region. Seven global and regional ocean tide models were tested: FES2004 corrected for K2, TPXO.7.0, TPXO.6.2, GOT00.2, CSR4.0, NAO.99b and the most recent regional grids of the North East Atlantic (NEA2004). These gridded amplitudes and phases of ocean tides were convolved in order to get the predicted OTL displacements using two different algorithms. Data over a period of 3.5 months of 8 GPS campaign stations located on the north coast of Brittany are used, in order to evaluate the geographical distribution of the OTL effect. We have modified and implemented new algorithms in our GPS software, GINS 7.1. GPS OTL constituents are estimated based on 1-day batch solutions. We compare the observed GPS OTL constituents of M2, S2, N2 and K1 waves with the selected ocean tide models on global and regional grids. Large phase-lag and amplitude discrepancies over 20° and 1.5 cm in the vertical direction in the semi-diurnal band of M2 between predictions and GPS/models are detected in the Bay of Mont St-Michel. From a least squares spectral analysis of the GPS time-series, significant harmonic peaks in the integer multiples of the orbital periods of the GPS satellites are observed, indicating the existence of multipath effects in the GPS OTL constituents. The GPS OTL observations agree best with FES2004, NEA2004, GOT00.2 and CSR4.0 tide models