[IGSMAIL-8152] New BRD4 RINEX navigation files and discontinuation of BRDX product

[Oliver.Montenbruck at dlr.de]

Following the recent release of the new RINEX 4 standard we are now in a position to share DLR's merged "BRD400DLR" navigation files in RINEX 4 format with the IGS user community via the IGS data centers.

Compared to the established BRDC00IGS and BRDM00DLR multi-GNSS broadcast ephemeris files made available so far, the new RINEX 4 files offer a diverse set of new CNAV message types transmitted by GPS, QZSS, and BeiDou-3. In addition, they provide comprehensive support of broadcast system time offsets, ionosphere model parameters and Earth orientation parameters made available in the various navigation data. Data for the new BRD400DLR product are extracted from raw and decoded navigation messages of a global set of receivers and merged into daily files that are made available within a few hours after midnight. Compared to RINEX 4, the RINEX 4 navigation file format includes various format changes but retains the basic layout for all established navigation messages to facilitate adaptation of corresponding software for reading and processing navigation files. A detailed format description is provided at https://www.igs.org/wg/rinex/#documents-formats. We hope that the new BRD400DLR files offer a valuable data source for users of the new navigation signals and help to familiarize users and manufacturers with the new format.

BRD400DLR files are made available retrospectively starting 1 January 2022. Along with their introduction, provision of the former "BRDX00DLR" product will be terminated. The latter had been introduced following the first IGS CNAV test campaign (see https://cddis.nasa.gov/archive/gnss/data/campaign/cnav/2013/06/aaaReadme.txt) and served as a temporary platform for exchanging GPS CNAV data over the past years. With the availability of the new comprehensive navigation data files in the official RINEX 4 format, BRDX has clearly become obsolete and will be discontinued.

The established BRDM00DLR navigation files in RINEX 3 format represent a subset of information from the new BRD400DLR product covering all legacy navigation message. They will be continued for compatibility with existing software until further notice.

The daily RINEX 4 navigation files will be accessible through the IGS data centers at the established locations for merged navigation files, e.g.

https://cddis.nasa.gov/archive/gnss/data/daily/<yyyy>/brdc/
ftp://igs.ign.fr/pub/igs/data/<yyyy>/<ddd>
https://igs.bkg.bund.de/root_ftp/IGS/BRDC/<yyyy>/<ddd>/

with <yyyy> and <ddd> denoting the desired year and day of year.

When referencing use of BRD400DLR files in your work, please use the following citation:

Montenbruck, O., & Steigenberger, P. (2022). BRD400DLR: DLR's merged multi-GNSS broadcast ephemeris product in RINEX 4.00 format [Data set]. DLR/GSOC. https://doi.org/10.57677/BRD400DLR

With best regards,

Oliver Montenbruck and Peter Steigenberger



Oliver Montenbruck
DLR, German Space Operations Center
Oberpfaffenhofen
D-82234 Wessling
Germany

Tel.    +49 (8153) 28-1195
Fax     +49 (8153) 28-1450
e-mail  oliver.montenbruck at dlr.de<mailto:oliver.montenbruck at dlr.de>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igs.org/pipermail/igsmail/attachments/20220125/05aa8fa0/attachment.htm>