Recent Advances in Marine Geodesy of China

The ocean accounts for approximately 71%of the total area of the Earth.Whether it is studying the shape of the Earth itself through geodesy or the future development of earth system science,strengthening the construction of ocean geodesy disciplines and innovating ocean geodetic observation technologies have evident theoretical and practical significance.In recent years,the discipline of ocean geodesy in China has been continuously developing and growing,and notable breakthroughs have been made in ocean satellite geodesy and seafloor geodetic observation technology.Research on ocean geodetic observation models and algorithms has also made great progress.

Analytical optimization on GNSS buoy array for underwater positioning

Global navigation satellite system(GNSS)/acoustic positioning precision is determined by the positioning geometry and the ranging precision;thus optimizing GNSS buoys array is meaningful to improve the positioning accuracy and reliability.An analytical method is proposed for optimizing the GNSS buoys array with regard to the cutoff angle constraints for underwater acoustic observations.For the practical limitation of coplanarity of GNSS buoys and the cutoff angle,an algorithm is proposed to analytically minimize the position dilution of precision(PDOP).The proposed method is validated to give complete solutions of PDOP minimization with five GNSS buoys.At last,in order to search a best configuration among the PDOP solution set,we propose a search algorithm to get the solution with the smallest geometric dilution of precision(GDOP).It indicates that within a given region,the GDOP minimization at the center of a region is equivalent to the PDOP mean minimization over the region.The relation between the positioning accuracy and the positioning geometry with five known points is illustrated in an experiment performed in South China Sea.

Progresses and Prospects of Marine Geodetic Datum and Marine Navigation in China

Territorial water is a significant part of national sovereignty of China,thus the infrastructures of national space datum and location services should cover the sea areas except for the land areas.China has established relatively complete geodetic coordinate frame in land areas over the past decades,including the lastest developed China Geodetic Coordinate System 2000(CGCS 2000)with its reference frame and the national gravity datum 2000.However,the currently used geodetic infrastructures have not well covered the sea areas of China.The marine geodetic datum and marine navigation technologies need to be further developed and extended to satisfy the national demands of marine environment and resources detection,scientific investigation as well as marine economy development in new era of China.This paper mainly reviews the development and the progress of Chinese marine geodetic datum and marine navigation,analyses related key technologies in establishing our national marine geodetic datum.Some current trends and future directions for independently developing our national marine geodetic datum and marine navigation technologies are discussed.

Adjustment Model and Colored Noise Compensation of Continuous Observation System

The affection caused by the colored noises should be taken into account to the adjustment model.As useful signals,these colored noises should be accurately identified and extracted by Fourier analysis.A continuous adjustment model is introduced with respect to the colored noises,and then it can be generalized from the finite space to the infinite space so called as Hilbert space.This extension is to provide a new technique to perform the continuous observational system design,Fourier analysis as well as the parameter estimation.It shows that the Gramer’s determinant provides maximization criteria in the system optimization design as well as a rule in diagnosing the adjustment model.Related with the definition of the integral,the least squares solution of the continuous adjustment model becomes the limit of the traditional least squares solution in finite space.Moreover,the influence caused by the colored noises is systematic,but it can be eliminated or compensated by optimally designing the observational system.

Centimeter‑level‑precision seafloor geodetic positioning model with self‑structured empirical sound speed profile

In-field Sound Speed Profile(SSP)measurement is still indispensable for achieving centimeter-level-precision Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)-Acoustic(GNSS-A)positioning in current state of the art.However,in-field SSP measurement on the one hand causes a huge cost and on the other hand prevents GNSS-A from global seafloor geodesy especially for real-time applications.We propose an Empirical Sound Speed Profile(ESSP)model with three unknown temperature parameters jointly estimated with the seafloor geodetic station coordinates,which is called the 1st-level optimization.Furthermore,regarding the sound speed variations of ESSP we propose a so-called 2nd-level optimization to achieve the centimeter-level-precision positioning for monitoring the seafloor tectonic movement.Long-term seafloor geodetic data analysis shows that,the proposed two-level optimization approach can achieve almost the same positioning result with that based on the in-field SSP.The influence of substituting the in-field SSP with ESSP on the horizontal coordinates is less than 3 mm,while that on the vertical coordinate is only 2–3 cm in the standard deviation sense.

Seafloor geodetic network establishment and key technologies

Seafloor geodetic network construction involves the development of geodetic station shelter, network configuration design, location selection and layout, surveying strategy, observation model establishment and optimization, data processing strategy and so on. This paper tries to present main technological problems involved in the seafloor geodetic network construction, and seek the technically feasible solutions. Basic conceptions of developing seafloor geodetic station shelters for shallow sea and deep-sea are described respectively. The overall criteria of seafloor geodetic network construction for submarine navigation and those of network design for crustal motion monitoring are both proposed. In order to enhance application performances of the seafloor geodetic network, the seafloor network configuration should prefer a symmetrical network structure. The sea surface tracking line measurements for determining the seafloor geodetic station position should also adopt an approximately symmetrical configuration, and we recommend circle tracking line observations combined with cross-shaped line(or double cross-shape line) observations for the seafloor positioning mode. As to the offset correction between the Global Navigation Satellite System antenna phase center and the acoustic transducer, it is recommended to combine the calibration through external measurements and model parameter estimation. Besides, it is suggested to correct the sound speed error with a combination of observation value correction and parameterized model correction, and to mainly use the model correction to reduce the influence of acoustic ray error on the seafloor positioning. Following the proposed basic designs, experiments are performed in shallow sea area and deep-sea area respectively. Based on the developed seafloor geodetic shelter and sufficient verification in the shallow sea experiment, a long-term seafloor geodetic station in the deep-sea area of 3000 m depth was established for the first time, and the preliminary positioning result shows that the internal precision of this station is better than 5 cm.