Discontinuity in GNSS Coordinate Time Series due to Equipment Replacement

The GNSS coordinate time series is used as important data for geophysical analysis such as terrestrial reference frame establishment, crustal deformation, Earth orientation parameter estimation, etc. However, various factors may cause discontinuity in the coordinate time series, which may lead to errors in the interpretation. In this paper, we describe the discontinuity in the coordinate time series due to the equipment replacement for domestic GNSS stations and discuss the change in movement magnitude and velocity vector difference in each direction before and after discontinuity correction. To do this, we used three years (2017-2019) of data from 40 GNSS stations. The average magnitude of the velocity vector in the north-south, east-west, and vertical directions before correction is -12.9±1.5, 28.0±1.9, and 4.2±7.6 mm/yr, respectively. After correction, the average moving speed in each direction was -13.0±1.0, 28.2±0.8, and 0.7±2.1 mm/yr, respectively. The average magnitudes of the horizontal GNSS velocity vectors before and after discontinuous correction was similar, but the deviation in movement size of stations decreased after correction. After equipment replacement, the change in the vertical movement occurred more than the horizontal movement variation. Moreover, the change in the magnitude of movement in each direction may also cause a change in the velocity vector, which may lead to errors in geophysical analysis.