An Atmospheric Refraction Error Correction System Applied to Low-Elevation Microwave Ranging Scenarios

In the ground-based microwave ranging system, microwaves must traverse the neutral atmosphere during transmission. Atmospheric refraction bends the microwave's path and alters its speed due to differences in refractive index between the tropospheric atmosphere and vacuum, ultimately resulting in significant errors in the final ranging results. To address this issue, an innovative high-precision, real-time atmospheric refraction correction algorithm is proposed. Based on this algorithm, an atmospheric refraction correction system centered on a high-precision sensor array is established. High-precision test field results indicate that within a 50 m range, the initial ranging error is about 15 mm. With traditional refraction correction, the maximum residual error is around 0.5 mm, whereas the proposed method reduces it to within ±26 μm. Overall, the system is capable of achieving micron-level real-time correction of atmospheric refraction errors in ground-based microwave ranging.