《An original approach to compute Satellite Laser Range biases》.pdf

An original approach to compute Satellite Laser Range biases 1 2 2 2 2 D. Coulot , Ph. Berio , O. Laurain , D. Féraudy , P. Exertier 1. IGN/LAREG - Marne-la-Vallée – France 2. CNRS/OCA/GEMINI - Grasse – France Contact: David.Coulot@ensg.ign.fr / Fax: +33-1-64-15-32-53 Abstract Although they are permanently calibrated, the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) stations can present residual systematic errors, the well-known “range biases”. These biases must be considered in any SLR data processing. Indeed, they are strongly correlated with the Up component of the station positions. Thus, if they are not computed together with these positions, they can induce jumps in these latter and consequently damage the global scale factor of the underlying Terrestrial Reference Frame with respect to any given reference. On the other hand, estimating range biases together with station positions is not so easy, due to the previously mentioned correlations. In this paper, we describe a new approach to derive range bias values together with station positions: the so-called “temporal de-correlation” approach. This method consists in computing station range biases per satellite over a “long” period of time (determined by instrumental changes) together with weekly station position time series in order to significantly reduce the correlations. Introduction This paper comprises four parts. First, we provide general considerations about the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) technique range biases. Second, we demonstrate the strength of our temporal de-correlation approach through numerical illustrations based on simulations. Then, we analyze the first results produced by this method which has already been used