Differential GPS Radiosonde Observation System

Makoto FUJITA, Hideki MASUYAMA, Naoki KANEKO, and Hiroshi KANEKO

Meisei Electric Co., Ltd., Japan

ABSTRACT In recent years, the Upper Air Observing System that uses GPS is used as an effective methods. GPS receiving device in a radiosonde improves observation accuracy, allowing simplification of ground equipment. This paper introduces the summary of the Upper Air Weather Observation System that adopts the Differential-Global Positioning System (hereafter called D-GPS) and examples of observation result that shows decrease of influence of swinging in flying and improvement of atmospheric pressure value accuracy at a high altitude. . D-GPS radiosonde In general, a Rawin radiosonde is equipped with a pressure sensor for obtaining the altitude. Since this Rawin radiosonde system has not sufficient resolution of pressure sensor in the Stratosphere that exceeds 30,000 m, the accuracy of measurement result at a high altitude is poor. Therefore, a GPS receiving device in a radiosonde allows accurate observation in a wide range of altitude from near the ground to the Stratosphere, resulting in improvement of the defect of the pressure sensor and also elimination of the pressure sensor from the radiosonde. Although SA(Selective Availability) was released for the GPS satellite on May 2000, the Differential Positioning System has been adopted for the purpose of more accurate position sensing. In addition, while a radio wave from a GPS satellite may generally cause a low accuracy due to Atmospheric path delay or the like, this D-GPS system assures high position accuracy regardless of weather conditions. . Brief of the system Figure 1 shows a system block diagram of the D-GPS radiosonde observation system. Photo 1 shows the appearance of the D-GPS.

Fig. 1 System block diagram

66W,150H,69D mm Approx. 200g

Photo 1 D-GPS radiosonde

The G-DPS radiosonde observation system consists of the following units:(D1) Transmitter (D-GPS radiosonde) A small GPS receiving device with the 1

D-GPS positioning system is incorporated in a radiosonde, and carrier in the band of 400 MHz is used to transmit observation data to the ground by means of the PCM (Pulse Coded Modulation), The total weight of the D-GPS radiosonde is approximately 200-gram; 2) Ground equipment i) Receiving antennas These consist of an antenna for receiving a radio wave from the radiosonde and a base station antenna for receiving a radio wave from a GPS satellite; iiReceiver and processor This consists of a GPS receiver on ground station ,a 400 MHz band receiver and its a PCM demodulator; iii) PC A personnel computer(PC) with the Windows-2000TM operating system (OS) allows display, storage, and printing of observation data and output with the weather report based on WMO- codes. . Result D3.1 Accuracy of positioning by D-GPS Figure 2 shows comparison data of point

elevation angle of 5-degree. In this figure, the y-axis indicates the East-West and the x-axis indicates the North-South direction. While the point GPS system shows displacement of approximately 100 m, the D-GPS system shows displacement of only approximately 10 m, resulting in improvement of positioning accuracy of the radiosonde. 3.2 Comparison with Rawin radiosonde The comparison was tested on 14, Nov., 2001 at Meisei Moriya-Factory in Japan where a balloon 2,000-gram in weight (buoyancy of 4,000-gram) was used, both radiosondes were connected to a connecting rod 1.5 m long, and flight was carried out. In this balloon, a launching rope 15 m long was used for suspending the sondes. (See Figure 4) The radiosondes used for the comparison test were Rawin radiosonde (Model RS-91) that is used by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) for daily routine observation and D-GPS radiosonde (Model RS-01G). We verified that the atmospheric pressure observation data from the D-GPS radiosonde allows observation with higher accuracy than Rawin radiosonde even in the Stratosphere. Figures 3 shows the observation data of atmospheric pressure data in joint flight of the Rawin-radiosonde with a pressure sensor and the D-GPS radiosonde. The comparison result of data between the Standard pressure levels and the Mandatory altitude are shown in Table 1. The differences between RS-91 and RS-01 altitude measurement are approximated, the results of Mandatory altitude indicates that accuracy in D-GPS radiosonde is smaller than the Rawin radiosonde that can be replaced. Where, the atmospheric pressure value from the D-GPS radiosonde is obtained by calculating from the geometric altitude from the GPS data, the air temperature obtained from the radiosonde, and the humidity sensor value.

Fig. 2 Accuracy of positioning

positioning GPS and Differential GPS. This indicates static data in continuous 12 hours that was obtained on 5th ,Nov., 1998 by both radiosondes fixed to a spot without any obstruction in the range exceeding the

Fig.3 Difference between Rawin and D-GPS sonde

Table 1 Comparison between Rawin-sonde and D-GPS sonde

Fig. 4 Scheme of comparison flight test

Fig. 5 Sample of the sounding ratio

3.3

High sounding ratio Figure 5 shows a sample of the sounding ratio in observation results with the D-GPS radiosonde Observation System. The sounding ratio means here percentage of effective GPS data to the whole data in 60 seconds. Since low ratio obstructs normal observation, increase of this ratio is important.

3. 3. Wind finding principle The GPS receiving device in a radiosonde obtains the direction and the velocity of the GPS satellite from the frequency deviation of radio wave from the satellite due to the Doppler shift and transmits the positioning information of the radiosonde to the ground. On the ground, reception of radio wave from the radiosonde allows observation of wind direction and wind speed in the upper air. Although the wind finding techniques with automatic Radio-theodlite system may cause an error of 3

elevation angle due to the surface of the sea return when the radiosonde is far away, the D-GPS radiosonde has solved this problem. . Other Features 4.1 Narrow Band Carrier For D-GPS, Carrier of Narrow band is used a quartz element is used in the oscillator circuit and the PLL (Phased-locked loop) circuit is adopted to divide 403.7 - 405.2 MHz into 16 channels in 100 kHz increments with the occupied bandwidth of 30 kHz. 4.2 Storage of sensor parameters The constants used for calculating sensor parameters are electronically stored in the D-GPS radiosonde together with the radiosonde identification number. The sensor parameters required for observation can be automatically calculated by receiving a radio wave from the radiosonde before flight and storing the parameters in a computer on the ground equipment. This method eliminates human errors in input of sensor parameters before flight, allowing rapid and reliable operation. . Specification 5.1 Measuring range and accuracy - Temperature Measuring range: -90 to +45 C Accuracy: +/- 0.2 to 0.5 C - Humidity Measuring range: -0 to +100 % RH Accuracy: +/-3% RH (Std) - Altitude Measuring range: -100 m to not specified Accuracy: +/-5m or less (rms.) - Wind Direction Measurement range: 0 to 360 degree - Wind velocity: +/- 0.2m/sec (rms.) .2 Transmitter - Frequency: Nominal 403-405MHz - Output Power: 100mW - Occupied band-width: 30kHz - CCIR emission type: F1D

Modulation: PCM Output signal: Frame Sync., Parameters, GPS information, and T,U(Optional P) Battery: Water-activated 7 to 9V GPS receiver: Digital 8 channels

.3 Ground equipment - Receiver: 400MHz-FM and 1.5GHz-GPS - PCM demodulator: 19.2kbps - Computer: PC/AT or equivalent - Operating System: Windows-2000 . Conclusion The D-GPS radiosonde Observation System is a high-precision/resolution position sensing system and a highly reliable upper air observation system that has an added algorithm for reducing influence from swinging of a radiosonde in flight to improve the sounding ratio. Also the radiosonde does not require any atmospheric pressure sensor, resulting in realization of a radiosonde 200 grams or less in weight including batteries. This allows reduction of cost for flight including a balloon. We expect that this upper air weather observation making use of the advantage of the D-GPS radiosonde will be spread widely. Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank to Yoichi Tsukagoshi for his support with a developing the advanced D-GPS radiosonde.