[teqc] RINEX Version 3.00 ready

[Werner Gurtner]

Author: W. Gurtner


RINEX Version 3.00 ready
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Dear colleagues,

the new Galileo Navigation Satellite System with its variety of frequencies and different ways of tracking the signals as well as the modernization of GPS asked for a modification of the Receiver-Independent Exchange Format RINEX.

The recently published RINEX Version 2.11 offers a simple way to quickly include GPS L2C (and Galileo) pseudorange and phase observations, but without the possibility to characterize the observables in more details (a requirement for high-precision applications in the future).

During the past few months first ideas and later a draft version of a completely new RINEX version, named 3.00, has been circulated among interested parties, finally leading to the format definiton presented in the document rinex300.pdf available at

ftp://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/igscb/data/format/rinex300.pdf
ftp://ftp.unibe.ch/aiub/rinex/rinex300.pdf
http://www.aiub.unibe.ch/download/rinex/rinex300.pdf

Major new features of Version 3.00 include:

- 3-character observation codes (including an attribute describing more precisely the generation mode of the observation)
- Improved observation data record format without record length limitation
- Inclusion of auxiliary information for antennae mounted on vehicles (e.g. spaceborne receivers) or antennae with non-standard orientation
- New pseudo-observations (ionosphere delay, receive channel numbers) for special applications

As the structure of the Galileo Navigation Message has not yet been released, it was not possible to define a RINEX navigation message file for Galileo at this time.

The GPS and GLONASS navigation message files have not been modified, so far. Proposals for modifications of the GPS nav mess files to account for new message items are welcome.

There are no implementation plans for RINEX Version 3.00 within IGS or other geodetic organizations yet, of course. The rather early definition of this new format was mainly driven by requests coming from the Galileo segment and by the expected time needed by software developers to introduce the new format into the data exchange, administration and processing programs.

Please send your remarks, information about inconsistencies, unclear formulations or errors in the documentation to the authors.

Best regards

Werner Gurtner                Lou Estey
Astronomical Institute        UNAVCO
University of Bern            Bolder
gurtner at aiub.unibe.ch         lou at unavco.org