EVALUATION OF DATA QUALITY OF PERMANENT GPS STATIONS IN SOUTH KOREA

As of September 2002, there are more than 60 operational permanent Global Positioning System (GPS) stations in South Korea. Their data are being used for a variety of purposes: geodynamics, geodesy, real-time navigation, atmospheric science, and geography. Especially, many of the sites are reference stations for DGPS (Differential GPS). However, there has been no comprehensive and qualitative analysis published to evaluate the data quality. In this study, we present preliminary results of our assessment of the permanent GPS sites in South Korea. We have analyzed the multi-path characteristics of each station using a quality-checking software package called TEQC. Another multipath analysis tool based on post-fit phase residuals was used to check the repeating patterns and the amount of the multipath at each site. The long-term stability of each station was analyzed using the root-mean-square (RMS) error of the estimated site positions for one year, which enabled us to evaluate the mount stability. In addition, the number of cycle slips at each site was derived by TEQC. Based on these series of tests, we compared the stability and data quality of permanent GPS stations in South Korea.