Determination of correlation coefficient between geoid-to-quasigeoid separation calculated by the satellite data in Sjöberg’s equation and GPS/Levelling method

In this paper, two techniques for calculating the geoid-to-quasigeoid separation are employed. One of them is GPS/Levelling customary method as a criterion where the geoid undulation and height anomaly are computed by subtracting the ellipsoid height attained via GPS from the orthometric height and normal height, respectively. Another approach is Sjöberg’s equation. We have used of the ICGEM website for definition of the variables of the Sjöberg’s equation, as the applied reference model is the EGM2008 global geopotential model and WGS84 reference ellipsoid. The investigations are performed over the stations of the GPS/Leveling network related to three selected areas in desert, mountain and flatland namely the Lout, Zagros and Khuzestan in Iran and afterward the correlation coefficient between the geoid-to-quasigeoid separation calculated using the satellite data in Sjöberg’s equation and GPS/Levelling method is estimated. The results indicate a straight correlation between the estimated separations from the two methods as its value for the Lout is 0.754, for the Zagros is 0.497 and for the Khuzestan is 0.659. consequently, using the satellite data in Sjöberg’s equation for the regions where there are not the GPS/Levelling and land gravity data, specially for the even areas, yield a satisfactory response of the geoidto-quasigeoid separation.