Gravity field improvement using GPS data from Topex/Poseidon - A covariance analysis

A covariance analysis is performed using a realistic scenario for processing 10 days of GPS data, to obtain the expected improvement to the GEM-T2 gravity field. The gravity bin technique has been refined to compute the covariance matrix associated with the spherical harmonic gravity field. It is shown that the GPS data from one ten-day arc of Topex/Poseidon with no a priori can improve medium degree and order (3-26) sigmas for the parameters in the GEM-T2 gravity field by more than an order of magnitude.