Ocean surface monitoring based on GPS kinematic positioning

In this paper, the conventional GPS kinematic positioning method and precise point positioning method for ocean surface monitoring are briefly presented and their corresponding pros and cons for sea level monitoring are also discussed. Then, algorithms for ocean surface parameter estimation from the GPS height component are introduced, which uses the spectral analysis method to extract sea level tide and sea wave parameters. A 48 hours GPS field data set by GPS buoy is used to evaluate the methods presented here. First, the height component analysis is performed to obtain the low-frequency and high-frequency signals which consist of ocean tide and wave components. Then, a wavelet transformation is performed to the high frequency series in order to detect the main wave period of about 10 second. The results show that GPS kinematic positioning technique can not only be used for ocean positioning but can also be used to monitor the ocean surface.