Noise analysis of continuous GPS coordinate time series for CMONOC Original Research Article

The Crustal Movement Observation Network of China (CMONOC) is one of the major scientific infrastructures, mainly using Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements, to monitor crustal deformation in the Chinese mainland. In this paper, decade-long coordinate time series of 26 continuous GPS sites of CMONOC are analyzed for their noise content using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). We study the noise properties of continuous GPS time series of CMONOC for the unfiltered, filtered solutions and also the common mode signals in terms of power law plus white noise model. In the spatial filtering, we remove for every time series a common mode error that was estimated from a modified stacking of position residuals from other sites within ∼1000 km of the selected site. We find that the common mode signal in our network has a combination of spatially correlated flicker noise and a common white noise with large spatial extent. We demonstrate that for the unfiltered solutions of CMONOC continuous GPS sites the main colored noise is a flicker process, with a mean spectral index of ∼1. For the filtered solutions, the main colored noise is a general power law process, indicating that a major number of the filtered regional solutions have a combination of noise sources or local effects. The velocity uncertainties from CMONOC continuous GPS coordinate time series may be underestimated by factors of 8–16 if a pure white noise model is assumed. In addition, using a white plus flicker noise model, the median values of velocity errors for the unfiltered solutions are 0.16 (north), 0.17 (east) and 0.58 (vertical) mm/yr, and the median values for the filtered solutions are 0.09 (north), 0.10 (east) and 0.40 (vertical) mm/yr.