IGS Infrastructure Committee / Comité de Infraestructura del IGS
I was honored by my IGS colleagues last year by being selected as the first IGS Infrastructure Committee Chairman. This is a great honor and I hope to be able to make the IC relevant and responsive within the IGS to all infrastructure issues. At the IC 13 IGS members are tasked with providing advice, analysis, in-depth comments, monitoring ideas, etc to the IGS Governing Board and Central Bureau (the executive arms of the IGS)
At the IC we are taking up very significant issues that have gone unaddressed for too long in the IGS in particular in terms of the IGS station network as it has grown beyond many’s expectations. The network is a collection of resources from many different organizations, which voluntarily have agreed to operate their permanent GNSS stations following the IGS standards and which provide the backbone of GNSS observations that go into the different IGS products: orbits, clocks, station positions, TZD, etc. The IGS network:
The IGS worldwide network of permanent GNSS stations have recently reached 420. The IC will be initially trying to understand the following: how many IGS are regularly missing from the Data Centers, how many stations have RINEX header inconsistencies with their published station logs, what RINEX data format version are IGS stations using, etc. Many of these basic issues are not being properly documented and tracked to see what the real performance of the network as a whole is.
The IC is particularly concerned with trying to understand the station and format issues so that they can be properly addressed. The main concern is that the IGS stations are able to provide access to the latest International Terrestrial Reference Frame by having stable position and velocity estimations for the stations, and by having stations with good data and with no jumps.
The IC will be making recommendations to the IGS GB and CB on the following issues: the raw navigation bit message, improved monitoring for stations, in-depth station performance analysis, RINEX format, RTCM streaming data format, etc.
I look forward to trying to make a positive impact in the IGS IC!
Ignacio Romero (Nacho of the IGS!)
