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Anomaly analysis of 18 years of newly merged GPS ephemeris from four IGS data centers

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Abstract

The merged GPS navigation files from the International GNSS Service (IGS) data centers, i.e., the Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS), the Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie (BKG), the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), and the Institut Geographique National (IGN) are occasionally contaminated by anomalies and inconsistent user range accuracy (URA). This contamination impairs the performance assessment of GPS service, especially the system integrity. We remerged these files starting Day of Year (DOY) 1, 2000 using all available navigation data files from IGS stations. To effectively get the upper bound URA, a frequency-dependent pattern recognition method was developed. In addition, a comprehensive comparison between the navigation data remerged by us and those provided by the four IGS data centers was performed. The compared results revealed that TGD and Issue of Data Clock (IODC) were the dominating anomalies in the merged navigation data from CDDIS and SIO for the first several years after 2000, and M0, Ω0, ω, and af0 were the dominant anomalies in the merged data from IGN. In addition to a number of missing records, many records with incorrect PRN (pseudo-random noise number), identifying a GPS satellite, were found in files from the IGS data centers. Although the number of anomalies in the merged files from CDDIS has continued to decrease in recent years, they have not disappeared and would affect system-level assessment and scientific applications to a certain extent. The results also revealed that our remerged files were more complete, clean, compact and consistent, making them more suitable for GPS system performance assessment and related research studies. Moreover, those data are now openly available.

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Acknowledgements

Our deepest gratitude goes to anonymous reviewers for their careful work and valuable suggestions that have helped to improve our paper substantially. This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41474029, 41574015), the Innovation Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. CXJJ-14-M18), the Key Program of the Major Research Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91638203), the Collaborative Precision Positioning Project funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2016YFB0501900), and the National R&D Infrastructure and Facility Development Program of China, “Fundamental Science Data Sharing Platform” (DKA2017-12-02-24). The authors would like to acknowledge the IGS data centers of CDDIS, BKG, SIO and IGN for providing access to the GPS navigation data and the International GNSS Monitoring and Assessment Service (iGMAS) data center of National Time Service Center for accommodating iggm data. We also thank Dr. Teng Liu of IGG (Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics) for helping us with the SPP (Standard Point Positioning) experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth’s Dynamics, Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430077, People’s Republic of China

    Haitao Wang, Jikun Ou, Shiming Zhong, Min Song & Aizhi Guo

  2. Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, People’s Republic of China

    Hu Jiang

  3. Key Laboratory of Precise Positioning and Timing Technology, National Time Service Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, 710600, People’s Republic of China

    Baoqi Sun

  4. School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Baoqi Sun

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  1. Haitao Wang
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  2. Hu Jiang
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  3. Jikun Ou
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  4. Baoqi Sun
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  5. Shiming Zhong
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  6. Min Song
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  7. Aizhi Guo
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Correspondence to Haitao Wang.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 8, 9 and 10.

Table 8 Summary of the elements of different ephemeris records with the same PRN-TOC in brdc (CDDIS) and iggm files from DOY001, 2000 to DOY270, 2017
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Table 9 Summary of the elements of different ephemeris records with the same PRN-TOC in auto (SIO) and iggm files from DOY001, 2000 to DOY270, 2017
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Table 10 Summary of the elements of different ephemeris records with the same PRN-TOC in brdc (IGN) and iggm files from DOY067, 2010 to DOY270, 2017
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Wang, H., Jiang, H., Ou, J. et al. Anomaly analysis of 18 years of newly merged GPS ephemeris from four IGS data centers. GPS Solut 22, 124 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-018-0791-1

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