Subject: New RINEX Versions 2.12 and 3.01
From: Werner Gurtner <werner.gurtner@aiub.unibe.ch>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:09:16 +0200

Dear colleagues,

after many extended and sometimes controversial discussions among
RINEX-interested parties how to deal with phase shifts (mainly the
1/4 cycle shifts between phase observations collected on different signal
channels or modulations, e.g. GPS L2C and L2(P/Y)) we finally came up
with a solution that should satisfy both those who prefer not to have to
bother with these phase shifts during data processing and the "purists" who
would like to be able to work with orginial, i.e. not corrected, phase data
as they are received from the satellite.

The idea is to request consistent phase observations in the RINEX files w/r
to these phase shifts so that the users or user programs do not have to
apply any corrections prior to ambiguity solution. I.e. the data provided to
the user continue to be "receiver-independent" even under conditions where it
is difficult or even impossible for the user to know the precise effects of
special tracking modes affects the phase delays. But the applied corrections,
if known, are to be reported in a new RINEX header record to allow the
reconstruction of the original phase values, if needed.

This new feature requires the definition of a new RINEX version, both for
RINEX Version 2 (--> 2.12) and Version 3 (--> 3.01).

At the same time a few other clarifications and additions were added to these
new versions. Please see chapter 11 (Verions 2.12) and chapter 9 (Version
3.01) in the respective documentations

ftp://ftp.unibe.ch/aiub/rinex/rinex212.txt and
ftp://ftp.unibe.ch/aiub/rinex/rinex301.pdf

I hope that we can make these new versions official now.

Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the discussions during the last
months.

Best regards

Werner Gurtner


-- 
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Universität Bern
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Prof. Dr.
Werner Gurtner
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