Abstract: The atmospheric refraction error is a main error source among the factors affecting the flight data processing of trajectory measurement. With the restriction of technical condition, the on-line atmospheric refraction correction always uses simplified model. Usually, the high-precision atmospheric refraction correction depends on the post-data processing due to its lower real-time capability. In order to adapt the higher-precision requirements of data processing in optical wave refraction error correction system, virtual height is used and height iteration step is amended according to the distribution change of atmosphere with altitude. The comparison with the general method shows that the improved method has the same accuracy, but the speed of the ray-tracing algorithm is greatly improved. Besides, the simulation may provide valuable reference for the projects of radio wave atmospheric refraction correction.