[unav_all] Announcing the Availability of GNSS RINEX 3 Format Files from UNAVCO and White Paper on UNAVCO Plans for GNSS Formats and Preprocessing Tools

[Fran Boler]

Announcing the Availability of GNSS RINEX 3 Format Files from UNAVCO and 
White Paper on UNAVCO Plans for GNSS Formats and Preprocessing Tools

UNAVCO has initiated a pilot project for providing community 
investigators with sample RINEX 3 format files. RINEX 3 is a standard 
format pioneered by the International GNSS Service (IGS) to provide 
clarity and flexibility for encoding observables from the newer GNSS 
constellations including Galileo, Beidou/Compass, QZSS, IRNSS, and SBAS, 
in addition to GPS and GLONASS. RINEX 3 is currently in version 3.03 
release and is described in documentation available from the IGS at 
ftp://igs.org/pub/data/format/rinex303.pdf. The IGS also provides RINEX 
3 format files for over 130 stations.

For this pilot project, UNAVCO is initially providing daily standard 
rate (typically 15-s sample interval) files with observables and 
ephemerides from four stations (BARO Barrow, Alaska; MCMD, McMurdo, 
Antarctica; RDLT, Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic; and RDSD, Santo 
Domingo, Dominican Republic).  Note that BARO and MCMD RINEX 3 files 
currently contain GPS and GLONASS constellations only due to receiver 
configuration. RDLT and RDSD RINEX files currently contain GPS, GLONASS, 
Galileo and Beidou/Compass observables. UNAVCO will be adding to the set 
of stations available in RINEX 3 in the future, including stations 
enabled for GNSS.

The access for RINEX 3 files is through anonymous ftp at:

ftp://data-out.unavco.org/pub/rinex3/obs/ <year>/<day-of-year>/ (for 
files containing GNSS observables)

and

ftp://data-out.unavco.org/pub/rinex3/nav/ <year>/<day-of-year>/ (for 
files containing ephemerides).

We are following the file naming conventions described in the RINEX 3 
documentation from the IGS.

To provide the RINEX 3 for the stations mentioned above, UNAVCO is 
relying on onboard translation available from the Trimble receivers at 
those stations. In the near future, as UNAVCO fields the Septentrio 
PolaRx5 receiver at selected stations, we plan to use 
Septentrio-provided translation tools for SBF-formatted files to RINEX 3 
format.

The availability of Quality Control (QC) for the RINEX 3 format is a 
work in progress. For the present, QC is available from this location:

ftp://data-out.unavco.org/pub/rinex3/qc/ <year>/<day-of-year>/

The files in this location are built from the RINEX 3 observables files 
via RINEX 3 to RINEX 2.11 translation with GFZRNX software from the GFZ 
Potsdam, followed by using UNAVCO’s TEQC software for the QC step. In 
the future we plan to provide QC using the GNUT/Anubis software from the 
University of Pecny, Czech Republic, which operates directly on RINEX 3 
format files, in addition to the QC just described.

UNAVCO continues to distribute archived data as RINEX 2.11 and will do 
so for the foreseeable future, as this remains the principal RINEX 
format utilized by UNAVCO community investigators.

There is additional information on UNAVCO plans for formats and tools 
related to GNSS in the white paper “UNAVCO Geodetic Data Services Plan 
for GNSS Modernization – Data Formats and Preprocessing Tools. 
<http://www.unavco.org/community/publications_and_reports/papers/GDS%20Plans%20for%20GNSS%20Modernization.pdf>”

Comments are welcome and may be directed to data AT unavco.org.




-- 
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Fran Boler, Ph.D.
Data Center Manager
Geodetic Data Services
UNAVCO
303.381.7453
boler AT unavco.org
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