ITRF2008: an improved solution of the international terrestrial reference frame

By Z. Altamimi, Xavier Collilieux, L. Métivier. 2011

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ITRF2008 is a refined version of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame based on reprocessed solutions of the four space geodetic techniques: VLBI, SLR, GPS and DORIS, spanning 29, 26, 12.5 and 16 years of observations, respectively. The input data used in its elaboration are time series (weekly from satellite techniques and 24-h session-wise from VLBI) of station positions and daily Earth Orientation Parameters (EOPs). The ITRF2008 origin is defined in such a way that it has zero translations and translation rates with respect to the mean Earth center of mass, averaged by the SLR time series. Its scale is defined by nullifying the scale factor and its rate with respect to the mean of VLBI and SLR long-term solutions as obtained by stacking their respective time series. The scale agreement between these two technique solutions is estimated to be 1.05 ± 0.13 ppb at epoch 2005.0 and 0.049 ± 0.010 ppb/yr. The ITRF2008 orientation (at epoch 2005.0) and its rate are aligned to the ITRF2005 using 179 stations of high geodetic quality. An estimate of the origin components from ITRF2008 to ITRF2005 (both origins are defined by SLR) indicates differences at epoch 2005.0, namely: −0.5, −0.9 and −4.7 mm along X, Y and Z-axis, respectively. The translation rate differences between the two frames are zero for Y and Z, while we observe an X-translation rate of 0.3 mm/yr. The estimated formal errors of these parameters are 0.2 mm and 0.2 mm/yr, respectively. The high level of origin agreement between ITRF2008 and ITRF2005 is an indication of an imprecise ITRF2000 origin that exhibits a Z-translation drift of 1.8 mm/yr with respect to ITRF2005. An evaluation of the ITRF2008 origin accuracy based on the level of its agreement with ITRF2005 is believed to be at the level of 1 cm over the time-span of the SLR observations. Considering the level of scale consistency between VLBI and SLR, the ITRF2008 scale accuracy is evaluated to be at the level of 1.2 ppb (8 mm at the equator) over the common time-span of the observations of both techniques. Although the performance of the ITRF2008 is demonstrated to be higher than ITRF2005, future ITRF improvement resides in improving the consistency between local ties in co-location sites and space geodesy estimates.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0570816525f74f1aa595bd9b0b891cca8f358f21

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Citations in the corpus

Assessment of the accuracy of global geodetic satellite laser ranging observations and estimated impact on ITRF scale: estimation of systematic errors in LAGEOS observations 1993–2014 (2016, methodology): “The most recent version of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, ITRF2008 (Altamimi et al. 2011) is realised through combination of up to 25 years of geodetic results from the four modern space geodetic techniques of satellite laser ranging (SLR), very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), G”
The IGS contribution to ITRF2014 (2016, background): “Except a 7 mm offset in the Z component, they are of the order of a few mm and a few tenths of mm/year, i.e. within the estimated uncertainties of the origin and origin rate of ITRF2008 (Altamimi et al. 2011; Wu et al. 2011; Argus 2012; Collilieux et al. 2014).”
Spatiotemporal filtering for regional GPS network in China using independent component analysis (2017, methodology): “Finally, the combined solutions were aligned to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame 2008 (Altamimi et al. 2011) through approximately 50 globally distributed reference stations using a seven-parameter transformation (translation, rotation, and scale).”
Impact of the arc length on GNSS analysis results (2016, methodology): “5 Very Long Baseline Interferometry. i. e., GPS and GLONASS), and DORIS6 and is consistent with the current version of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, namely ITRF2008 (Altamimi et al. 2011).”
Precision comparison and analysis of four online free PPP services in static positioning and tropospheric delay estimation (2015, methodology): “The results processed by APPS mainly include a summary file that contains 3D coordinates (X, Y, Z)/(B, L, H) of the user station in ITRF2008 and zenith tropospheric delays of every resolution epoch (Altamimi et al. 2011).”
The IERS EOP 14C04 solution for Earth orientation parameters consistent with ITRF 2014 (2019, methodology): “These data sets are (i) the daily pole coordinate provided along with the ITRF 2014 realization over 1993–2015 (Altamimi et al. 2016), and (ii) the latest quarterly combined solution for UT1 and nutation offsets provided by International VLBI Service for geodesy and astrometry (Schuh and Behrend…”
Detecting offsets in GPS time series: First results from the detection of offsets in GPS experiment (2013, neutral): “Aside from the applications of individual GPS time series, the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) must reach an accuracy of 0.1 mm/yr to meet future science requirements [ Altamimi et al. , 2011].”
Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam (2011, background): “The inter-technique scale consistency is at the level of 10−9 [40, 43].”
Network-based estimation of time-dependent noise in GPS position time series (2015, background): “The positions are rotated into the North American reference frame from ITRF2008.”
Fast error analysis of continuous GNSS observations with missing data (2013, methodology): “1997) to produce daily solutions that were subsequently mapped into ITRF2008 (Altamimi et al. 2011).”
VLBI: A fascinating technique for geodesy and astrometry (2012, methodology): “Altamimi et al. (2011) estimated the accuracy of the origin and scale of ITRF2008 to be at the cmlevel, with the scale exhibiting a consistency of about 1.2 ppb (parts From Altamimi et al. (2011), Fig.”
Space geodesy constrains ice age terminal deglaciation: The global ICE‐6G_C (VM5a) model (2015, background): “(IGS08 is a realization of ITRF2008 [Altamimi et al., 2011].)”