Earth Orientation Parameter Estimation by Integrating VLBI and GNSS on the Observation Level

The terrestrial and celestial reference frames are linked by the Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP), which describe the irregularities of the Earth's rotation and are determined by the space geodetic techniques, namely, Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), and Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS). The satellite geodetic techniques (SLR, GNSS, and DORIS) cannot determine the UT1-UTC or celestial pole offsets (CPO), rendering VLBI the only technique capable of determining full EOP set. On the other hand, the GNSS technique provides precise polar motion estimates due to the continuous observations from a globally distributed network. Integrating VLBI and GNSS provides the full set of EOP and guarantees a superior accuracy than any single-technique solution.

In this study we focus on the integrated estimation of the full EOP set from GNSS and VLBI. Using five VLBI continuous observing campaigns (CONT05–CONT17), the GNSS and VLBI observations are processed concurrently in a common least-squares estimator. The impact of applying global ties (EOP), local ties, and tropospheric ties, and combinations thereof is investigated. The polar motion estimates in integrated solution are dominated by the huge GNSS observations, and the accuracy in terms of weighted root mean squares (WRMS) is ~40 μas compared to the IERS 14 C04 product, which is much better than that of the VLBI-only solution. The UT1-UTC and CPO in the integrated solution also show slight improvement compared to the VLBI-only solution. Moreover, the CPO agreement between the two networks in CONT17, i.e., the VLBA and IVS networks, shows an improvement of 20% to 40% in the integrated solution with different types of ties applied.