A Mathematical Model of Troposphere Water Vapor Tomography

The tomographical contribution of the Global Positioning System (GPS) is possible due to methods of high precision detection of tropospheric delays of navigation signals from the satellites to the receivers. A system of linear equations with rectangular matrices is considered as the mathematical model of troposphere water vapor distribution. The authors use numerical simulation as the most time- and cost-efficient way to study the different processes related to this model to realize the tropospheric water vapor tomography. The possible mathematical approach to construct the virtual ground-based sensors (GPS-receivers) network for a real geographical location and discretization of the troposphere are described. The output of tomographical modeling of the troposphere might be applied to improve the results of large scale numerical weather prediction models but also real-time navigation. The questions of voxel geometry and methods of data processing are expected as further key questions in constructing an effective GPS-receiver network for water vapor tomography.