Analysis and combination of four technique-individual EOP time series

Abstract

Based on four intra-technique combined solutions in SINEX format, we tried at first to assess the accuracy of each single-technique Earth Orientation Parameters (EOPs) series over a past time interval of at least15 years by comparison with IERS EOP 08C04 combined solution as the reference in this paper. The EOPs studied here mainly consist of four elements, i.e. polar motion (XPO, YPO), Universal Time (UT1-UTC) and length-of-day (LOD). We combined these intra-technique EOP series, each of them associated with a given space geodetic technique by taking advantage of the relationship of the first three EOP components and three rotational parameters which carry the orientation of technique-related reference frame with respect to the estimated weekly inter-technique combined reference frame. Results indicated that the discrepancy between the pole coordinates (XPO, YPO) series, extracted from the intra-SLR combined loose-constraint solutions and the IERS EOP 08C04, seemed to be clearly characterized by systematic errors. Although both the XPO and YPO series determined by intra-VLBI combination had no significant characteristic of system error, they had relatively large difference values at some point with respect to the IERS EOP 08C04, which may be limited by the quantity of observation stations. Since the number of GPS stations is on the increase aimed at better global coverage, the accuracy of pole coordinates provided by IGS was superior to that derived from other space-geodetic techniques. As for DORIS XPO and YPO series from intra-DORIS combined minimal-constraint solutions, the discrepancy range of the former with respect to IERS EOP 08C04 was a little smaller than that of the latter. The objective of this study is twofold: on the one hand to analysis individual EOP series derived from the various space-geodetic techniques, on the other hand to present the new inter-technique combined EOP solution consistent with weekly inter-technique combined reference frame. Keywords: Earth Orientation Parameter (EOP), Inter-technique combination, Terrestrial reference frame