Improving the Threshold of Detectable Co-Seismic Displacements by Using High Rate GPS Measurements

The accuracy of GPS derived positions in short term measurements largely depends on the better modeling of residual errors which is normally reduced in long term measurements by averaging the obtained results. To increase the accuracy of the movements obtained through the analysis of high rate data in geophysics applications, systematic errors in the existing measurements in the corresponding frequency range should be reduced. Calibration techniques and the error reduction are based on the repeatability of the system constellation. For example, those errors affecting the resulting accuracy of the high rate positions in the time scales of 10-600s depend much on the constellation geometry of the GPS satellites and GPS stations. Since the satellite orbits are fixed, those errors are highly repeatable in time. This characteristic is the base for the development of sidereal filtering techniques for reducing this kind of errors. It is assumed that the repeatability occurs based on the nominal repetition period of the satellites; however, the true time of this repeatability varies even for each satellite. In this paper the mean period is estimated as 23h, 55m, and 55s and used for the noise reduction of time series of the relative displacement. By using this period, noises with frequencies less than 0.01Hz of high rate GPS positions have been reduced significantly. Accessible co-seismic displacements are reduced to less than 4mm in horizontal components and less than 10mm in the vertical components.