A Study on the Transfer of the ITRF Datum to a GPS Network in Antarctica

The Reference Network Antarctica represents a highly precise densification of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) in the Antarctic region. It was established within two bundle projects sponsored by the Ministery of Science and Research of Germany (BMBF) under the auspices of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). Several German scientific institutions including the Geodetic Institute of the University of Karlsruhe contributed to this network. This result is based on simultaneous GPS observations in the Antarctic summers 1994/95 and 1997/98. The ITRF96 has been introduced as datum information via several ITRF sites in Antarctica and on neighbouring continents.For the practical use of the ITRF it is essential to consider the compability of the SCAR98 with the ITRF96 network. Therefore several aspects like, e.g., correlations between the datum parameters or their spectral characteristics according to eigenvalue decompositions will be presented. In addition the difference between the GPS network geometry noise and the Reference Frame Noise will be discussed.