Abstract Time is the fundamental measurement in satellite altimetry and the key parameter in building and keeping up a long-term, consistent, and reliable record for monitoring changes in sea level. Over the years, different time scales, although interconnected, have been used in altimetry and also in satellite positioning. This sometimes leads to inexplicit descriptions and ambiguous use of time and orbit coordinates as well as of their transformations between various reference and measuring systems. Altimetry satellites, like Sentinel-3, CryoSat-2, Jason-3, HY-2A/-2B, IceSat-2, etc., observe and practically realize ranges by measuring time differences between the transmission and reception of an electromagnetic wave (either radar or laser at present). Similar principles apply for global navigation satellite systems and for their terrestrial reference systems upon which altimetry is linked and tied together. Yet, the “meter” of any terrestrial reference systems is also defined by time. This work seeks to establish a standard reference system for “time” and “coordinates” in an effort to reach uniform and absolute standardization for satellite altimetry. It describes various errors generated from differences, discontinuities and interactions in time, frequency, range, time tagging, and reference coordinate frames. A new approach, called “fiducial reference measurements for altimetry”, is here given to examine ways to connect errors with metrology standards in order to improve the estimation of uncertainty budgets in ocean and water level observation by altimetry. Finally, the geocentric inertial reference system and the international atomic time are proposed in this paper for satellite altimetry observations and products.

中文翻译：

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卫星测高中时间和坐标的基准参考系统

摘要 时间是卫星测高的基本量度，是建立和保持长期、一致、可靠的海平面变化监测记录的关键参数。多年来，不同的时间尺度虽然相互关联，但已用于测高和卫星定位。这有时会导致对时间和轨道坐标以及它们在各种参考和测量系统之间的转换的不明确描述和模糊使用。测高卫星，如 Sentinel-3、CryoSat-2、Jason-3、HY-2A/-2B、IceSat-2 等，通过测量电磁波（或目前是雷达或激光）。类似的原则适用于全球导航卫星系统和它们的地面参考系统，在这些系统上，高度计被链接在一起。然而，任何地面参考系统的“米”也是由时间定义的。这项工作旨在建立“时间”和“坐标”的标准参考系统，以努力实现卫星测高的统一和绝对标准化。它描述了由时间、频率、范围、时间标记和参考坐标系的差异、不连续性和相互作用产生的各种误差。这里给出了一种称为“高度测量的基准参考测量”的新方法，用于研究将误差与计量标准联系起来的方法，以改进高度测量对海洋和水位观测中的不确定性预算的估计。最后，