The Potential for Observing African Weather with GNSS Remote Sensing

Table 5

Comparison of GNSS RO with other atmospheric sounding techniques.

	Ground-based GNSS	GNSS RO	Radiosonde	Satellite remote sensing	VLBI	DORIS
Coverage	Ground-based and limited by spatial accessibility	Spaced based and global coverage	Ground-based and limited by spatial accessibility	Spaced based and global coverage	Ground-based and limited by spatial accessibility	Ground-based and limited by spatial accessibility
Vertical resolution	Very low	Very high	High	Low	Very low	Very low
Horizontal resolution	Inhomogeneous	Homogeneous, dependent on LEO orbit design	Inhomogeneous	Uniform	Inhomogeneous	Inhomogeneous
Temporal resolution	Continuous, higher than other techniques	Depending on LEO orbit design, normally higher than radiosonde	2–4 times per day	Depending on orbit design, normally higher than radiosonde	Not continuous	Continuous
Water condition	All weather capability	All weather capability	Unavailable in extreme weather conditions	Significantly affected by cloud and particles in the atmosphere	All weather capability	All weather capability
Cost	Relatively cheap	Low in a long term	High operation and maintenance cost	Low in a long term	Very expensive	Low in a long term
Calibration	Not required	Not needed, mission independent	Necessary and important	Calibration needed for different instruments	Necessary and important	Necessary and important
Layers of atmosphere	Not applicable	All layers	From the surface up to 30 km	Depending on instrument design	Not applicable	Not applicable
Accuracy	High	High	High	Low	Very high	High
Stability	Very high	Very high	Low	High	Very high	High