Low-cost GPS-based volcano deformation monitoring at Mt. Papandayan, Indonesia

The Global Positioning System (GPS) can be utilised to detect ground deformations of the surface of a volcano. Ground deformation monitoring is considered one of the most effective tools for investigating the behaviour of active volcanoes. The decreasing cost of GPS hardware, together with the increased reliability of the technology, facilitates such demanding applications. GPS ground deformation measurements can be continuous, automatic, conducted in all weather conditions and, provide threedimensional positioning results. Higher computing power also means that the complex mathematics required to process GPS baselines can be easily handled in near real time.

During the past few years a methodology has been developed for processing data collected by GPS networks consisting of a mixed set of single-frequency and dual-frequency receivers. The strategy is to deploy a few permanent, ‘fiducial’ GPS stations with dual-frequency, geodetic-grade receivers surrounding an ‘inner’ network of low-cost, single-frequency GPS receivers. Such a configuration offers considerable flexibility and cost savings for geodynamic applications such as volcano deformation monitoring, which require a dense spatial coverage of GPS stations, and where it is not possible to establish permanent GPS networks using only expensive dual-frequency instrumentation.

This configuration has recently been tested at the Mt. Papandayan volcano in West Java, Indonesia. The two-stage network design consists of an inner network of four single-frequency Canadian Marconi (CM) GPS receivers surrounded by three dual-frequency Leica CRS1000 GPS receivers. The inner network logged and transmitted GPS data from the ‘slave’ stations located on the volcano, to a base station. The combined processing of the CM and Leica receiver data was performed offline so as to investigate the performance of such a mixed-mode system. The basis of the processing methodology is to separate the dual-frequency, ‘fiducial’ station data processing from the baseline processing involving the singlefrequency receivers on the volcano. The data processing for the former was carried out using a modified version of the Bernese software, to generate a file of ‘corrections’ (analogous to Wide Area DGPS correction models for the distance dependent biases -- primarily due to atmospheric refraction). These ‘corrections’ were then applied to the double-differenced phase observations from the inner receivers to improve the baseline accuracies. A description of the field testing (and its challenges) during February- March 2000, together with a discussion of some of the results are presented.