HR: 11:00h
AN: G32A-03 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: The Role of VLBI in the TRF
AU: * Ma, C
EM: cma@gemin.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 697, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: MacMillan, D S
EM: dsm@leo.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NVI, Inc. / Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 697, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: The international VLBI network is a major contributor to the TRF by virtue of its 25-year data set and unique access to the celestial reference frame in which Earth orientation is defined. The TRF and EOP results are suboptimal, however, because of non-ideal station spatial distribution (arising from the vagaries of national interests and capabilities over the years), irregular temporal resolution (related to operational funding and other station activities), and heterogeneous equipment. Better modeling related to thermal, structural and tilt effects of the large VLBI antennas is needed to eliminate non-geodetic signatures and systematic biases. Modeling of the troposphere must always be improved and unified with other microwave techniques. The VLBI community is beginning the design of a new geodetic VLBI station to be deployed in an uniform, optimized global network including such features as small antenna size, much faster slewing, wide RF bandwidth, higher recording rates and data transmission via high-speed fiber along with automated correlation and analysis. Simulations of this enhanced VLBI capability for the TRF will be presented.
DE: 1229 Reference systems
DE: 1241 Satellite geodesy: technical issues (6994, 7969)
DE: 1294 Instruments and techniques
DE: 1295 Integrations of techniques
SC: Geodesy [G]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005