Homework 3

Prerequisite: You need to make sure the software has been properly installed and you have successfully completed the “homework 0” assignment. You should also read the gnssrefl documentation.

Purpose: Learn how to measure water level with gnssrefl using GNSS data

Station: We will be using station ross. It is operated by NRCAN. This map gives you an overview of GNSS stations operated by NRCAN. Use the plus sign on the map to look more closely at Lake Superior. Find ross and click on it (station M023004). If you scroll down, you will see a photo of the monument.

NRCAN is operating what I would call a “legacy” GNSS instrument. This means it only tracks the original GPS signals that were designed in the 1970s. This means none of the enhanced GPS signals (L2C and L5) available since 2005 are provided. Furthermore, there are no signals from Glonass, Galileo, or Beidou. The bottom line is that you will be using only the L1 GPS signal, which leaves you with ~15% of what would be available from a modern multi-GNSS unit. The sample rate - 30 seconds - limits what kind of reflectometry you can do. For the purposes of this homework, it restricts the RH to values less than ~10 meters.

Azimuth/Elevation Mask

Next, let’s get an idea of what this site looks like from a reflections viewpoint. Use the geoid tab on the gnss-reflections webapp to get an idea of its surroundings. You can enter the station coordinates by hand if you know them, but since ross is part of a public archive known to geodesists, coordinates have been stored in the webapp. Just type in ross for the station name. Make a note of the station latitude, longitude, and ellipsoidal height that is returned by the webapp because you will need it later. Although the elevation above sea level of the site is ~186 meters, from the photo you know already this is not the value we will want to use for our reflections study. We will start with our common sense, look at the data, and iterate if necessary.

Use the reflection zone section of the web app to get an idea of what reflection zones are possible for this site. We cannot use the default sea level reflection value, so you need to set a Reflector Height (RH) value. Based on the photograph, try values that you think are reasonable. You don’t want your reflection zones to cross a dock or the nearby boats, so you should also rerun it with different azimuth limits. Don’t worry about it too much as we will get feedback from the actual GPS data.

Make a note of:

  • RH
  • elevation angle values that give water coverage without interference from docks/boats
  • azimuth angle values that cover open water without interference
  • the DECIMAL latitude, longitude, and height (from the geoid webapp).
  • we can only use L1 GPS data at this site
  • We can't estimate RH larger than 10 meters because of the sampling rate

Using gnssrefl

Now let’s look at the ross data. We need to pick up a RINEX file and strip out the SNR data. We use the rinex2snr for this purpose. Use -h if you want to see the options for this module. We will throw caution to the winds and see if the defaults will work. The only required inputs are the station name (ross), the year (2020) and day of year (150) (note: to convert from year and day of year to year, month, day and vice versa, try the modules ydoy and ymd).

By default rinex2snr tries to find the RINEX data for you by looking at a few key archives. However, if you know where the data are, it will be faster to specify it. In this case they are available from both sopac and nrcan. Try the -archive option.

Once you have successfully created a SNR file, run quickLook. You will see two graphical representations of the data. The first is periodograms for the four geographic quadrants (northwest, northeast, and so on). You are looking for nice clean (and colorful) peaks. Color means they have passed Quality Control (QC). Gray lines are satellite tracks that failed QC. The second plot summarizes the RH retrievals and how the QC metrics look compared to the defaults. In this case the x-axis is azimuth in degrees.

From these plots, how does the correct RH value compare with the one you assumed earlier when you were trying out the webapp? How about the azimuths? Go back to the reflection zone webapp and make sure you are happy with your azimuth and elevation angle selections.

Next we need to save our gnssrefl analysis strategy using gnssir_input. Your analysis strategy can and should be improved by setting some parameters on the command line.

Hints:

  • Check the documentation to see how to set the elevation angles and RH limits on the command line

  • Since we can only use L1 data, you should use the -l1 True flag.

  • You will need to estimate the azimuth mask using the -azlist2 argument

Now run gnssir for the year 2020/doy 150. This module is meant for routine analysis and thus there are not a lot of bells and whistles. However, it is good practice to see that something is actually created (the screen output will tell you where it is).

Extra Credit:

The gnssir output tells you the vertical distance between the GPS antenna and the lake for each successful satellite track. That is not super exciting; it is a little more interesting to see if it changes over time, which means you need to analyze a bit more data.

  • use rinex2snr to make SNR files for the same year, but now do doy 120 through 290. Remember to use -doy_end to do that in a single command. And use -weekly True to make fewer files (which will make everything much faster). Why did I pick those dates? Mostly to avoid snow (yeap, it snows up there!)

  • run gnssir for those dates. You do not need the weekly option here - you can just specify 120 through 290. It will look for every day, but if it doesn’t find it, it just looks for the next day, etc.

  • You can now use the daily_avg to make a daily average for the lake level on each day you analyzed.

Extra Extra Credit:

Compare your results with the lake gauge data.