Politecnico di Milano – DIIAR c/o Polo Regionale di Como, via Valleggio, 11 – 22100 Como, Italy

At present, the tidal correction model described in the IERS 2003 Conventions should be applied in the processing of permanent networks: in brief, the model involves the computation of a first order tidal correction plus some corrective terms, as functions of space and time. In the BERNESE software, one of the main scientific softwares for GPS network processing, the IERS tidal model is implemented; in July 2004, a bug in the tidal correction routine was identified by one of the paper authors and corrected by the BERNESE staff: the error concerned a second order term, related to the semidiurnal tidal signal. An experimental analysis on the error effects in the results stemming from processing of regional networks has been carried out. A network of 8 European permanent GPS stations has been selected: the network choice ensures heterogeneity in the length and the orientation of the baselines. One year of data has been considered and two elaborations of the data have been performed using the BERNESE 4.2 SW, by applying the same processing strategy and, respectively, the wrong (old) and the right (corrected) tidal correction routine. The differences in the network results and the deformations caused by the error are discussed.

This paper illustrates the surveys and the results obtained in an experiment whose goal is to evaluate the Global Positioning System (GPS) sensitivity and accuracy for deformation control on non-permanent network of di fferent extensions. To this aim a high-precision device was properly built to set up known displacements along three orthogonal axes of a GPS antenna. One of the antennas in the considered GPS networks was moved according to centimeter and sub-centimeter displacements; after careful GPS data pro- cessing, it was evaluated whether these simulated deformations were correctly a posteriori detected and at which probability level. This experiment was carried out both on a local (baselines ranging between 3 and 30 km)and on a regional (baselines ranging between 300 and 600 km) GPS network. The results show that in the local network it is possible to identify the displacements at a level of 10 mm in height and at a level of 5 mm in horizontal position. The analysis of the regional network showed that it is fundamental to investigate new strategies to model the troposphere; in fact, it is necessary to improve the precision of the height in order to correctly identify displacements lower than 60± 80 mm; on the contrary, horizontal displacements can be evidenced at the level of 20 mm.