Abstract
In geodetic and geophysical applications of GPS, it is important to realize the ephemerides of the GPS satellites and the coordinates of station positions in a consistent reference system. At present, more than one reference system is being used by various GPS users depending on their specific applications. The WGS-84 and various reference frames based on satellite laser ranging (SLR), very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), or a combination of SLR and VLBI are the most commonly used in high precision geophysical applications. The WGS-84 is widely used in applications which rely on the GPS broadcast ephemeris. Station coordinates estimated in one system may have to be transformed to another for further use or for evaluation/comparison purposes. This paper presents a seven-parameter transformation between the WGS-84 and SLR/VLBI reference frames. The GPS double-differenced phase measurements for two consecutive weeks from a set of five Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) sites (defined in the WGS-84 frame) and from an augmented set of fifteen CIGNET sites (defined in the SLR/VLBI frame) were processed in a least squares estimation scheme to determine station coordinates, from which the transformation parameters were determined. A scale difference of about 0.2 ppm and an orientation difference in longitude of about 31 milliarcseconds were found to be the only parameters of significance between the adopted SLR/VLBI and the WGS-84 frames. Transformation between WGS-84 and the ITRF90 is also included, in which the scale difference is the same as before but the longitude rotation is about 16 mas.
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Abusali, P.A.M., Schutz, B.E., Tapley, B.D. et al. Transformation between SLR/VLBI and WGS-84 reference frames. Bulletin Géodésique 69, 61–72 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00819552
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00819552