Effects on geodetic VLBI measurements due to polarization leakage in S/X receivers: Fid-Bau Portal

Effects on geodetic VLBI measurements due to polarization leakage in S/X receivers

Bertarini, Alessandra / Roy, Alan L. / Corey, Brian / Walker, R. Craig / Alef, Walter / Nothnagel, Axel

Abstract Geodetic very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) delivers time series of station positions and Earth orientation parameters. These series offer a viable and precise way to study Earth crustal and core dynamics and to support space navigation. Their accuracy is degraded by instrumental errors, of which polarization leakage is considered to be one of the largest that is not yet being addressed. Its effect on the data can be corrected, provided one knows the leakage characteristics of the receivers. For this purpose, we designed a VLBI session to measure the polarization leakage at 15 geodetic and very long baseline array stations over the frequency range from 8,212.99 to 8,932.99 MHz. We describe the polarization leakage measurements and the algorithm that was implemented to correct for its effect on the geodetic delay observables. Subsequently, we applied the correction for polarization leakage to the same data that were used to determine the leakage and checked for the resulting improvement. From the measured leakage terms, one would expect polarization leakage to affect the group delay measurements in 90% of the cases by 1.6 ps or less. This proved to be below the statistical noise in our single VLBI session, and hence, an improvement from the correction could not be detected. Applying this analysis in the context of VLBI2010, we provide a specification for the allowable polarization leakage to achieve the target submillimetre accuracy.