Files and File Formats

You need two environment variables: REFL_CODE and ORBITS. If you are using the jupyter notebooks or the docker, they are defined for you. If you are working with pypi or github install, you must define them EVERY TIME YOU USE THE CODE. This is most easily done by setting them in your setup script, which on my machine is called .bashrc.

GPS/GNSS Data Formats

Input observation formats: the code only recognizes RINEX 2.11, RINEX 3 and NMEA input files.

RINEX 2.11

We require that you use lower case filenames. These are the standard at global archives. They must have SNR data in them (S1, S2, etc) and have the receiver coordinates in the header. The files should follow these naming rules:

  • all lowercase

  • station name (4 characters) followed by day of year (3 characters) then 0.yyo where yy is the two character year.

  • Example: algo0500.21o where station name is algo on day of year 50 from the year 2021

Example filename : onsa0500.22o

RINEX 3

While we allow RINEX 3 files, we do not read the file itself - we rely on the gfzrnx utility developed by Thomas Nischan at GFZ to translate from RINEX 3+ to RINEX 2.11 If you have ss second RINEX 3 files, they should be all upper case (except for the extension rnx or crx).

  • station name (9 characters where the last 3 characters are the country), underscore

  • capital R or capital S , with underscore on either side

  • four character year

  • three character day of year

  • four zeroes, underscore,

  • 01D, underscore

  • ssS, underscore, M0.

  • followed by rnx (crx if it is Hatanaka format).

01D means it is one day. Some of the other parts of the very long station file name are no doubt useful, but they are not recognized by this code. By convention, these files may be gzipped but not unix compressed. You cannot use rinex2snr to translate RINEX 3 file unless they have the 01D naming convention. If you want a generic translation program, try rinex3_rinex2.

Example filename: ONSA00SWE_R_20213050000_01D_30S_MO.rnx

NMEA

NMEA formats can be translated to SNR using nmea2snr. Inputs are similar to rinex2snr: 4char station name, year, and day of year NMEA files are assumed to be stored as:

$REFL_CODE + /nmea/ABCD/2021/ABCD0030.21.A

for station ABCD in year 2021 and day of year 3.

NMEA files may be gzipped.

nmea2snr needs better in-code documentation.

Orbit files

We have tried our best to make the orbit files relatively invisible to users. But for the sake of completeness, we are either using broadcast navigation files in the RINEX 2.11 format or precise orbits in the sp3 format.

Where Files are Stored

File structure for station abcd in the year YYYY (last two characters YY), doy DDD:

  • REFL_CODE/input/abcd.json - instructions for gnssir analysis, refraction files

  • REFL_CODE/YYYY/snr/abcd/abcdDDD0.YY.snr66 - SNR files

  • REFL_CODE/YYYY/rinex/abcd/ - RINEX files can be stored here

  • REFL_CODE/YYYY/results/abcd/DDD.txt Lomb Scargle analysis goes here

  • REFL_CODE/YYYY/phase/abcd/DDD.txt phase analysis

  • REFL_CODE/Files/ - various output files and plots will be placed here

  • ORBITS/YYYY/nav/autoDDD0.YYn - GPS broadcast orbit file

  • ORBITS/YYYY/sp3/ - sp3 files of orbits - these use names from the archives.

RINEX files downloaded from archives are not stored by this code. In fact, quite the opposite. If they are being translated, they are deleted. Do not keep your only copy of RINEX files in your default directory.

You do not need precise orbits to do GNSS-IR. We only use them as a convenience. Generally we use multi-GNSS sp3 files. that are defined as:

Some of the utilities and environmental products code store files in REFL_CODE/Files The locations of these files are always provided in the screen output.

The inputs to gnssir are generally stored in the REFL_CODE/input folder. This primarily means the Lomb Scargle data analysis inputs, i.e. the “json” files, e.g. p041.json for station p041. It also includes the refraction file (p041_refr.txt) that is created automatically. This calculation requires a set of parameters stored in a “pickle” format, gpt_1wA.pickle. This file should be automatically stored for you.

The SNR data format

The snr options are mostly based on the need to remove the “direct” signal. This is not related to a specific site mask and that is why the most frequently used options (99 and 66) have a maximum elevation angle of 30 degrees. The azimuth-specific mask is decided later when you run gnssir. The SNR choices are:

  • 66 is elevation angles less than 30 degrees (this is the default)

  • 99 is elevation angles of 5-30 degrees

  • 88 is all data

  • 50 is elevation angles less than 10 degrees (good for very tall sites, high-rate applications)

66,99, etc are not good names for files. And for this I apologize. It is too late to change them now.

The columns in the SNR data are defined as:

1. Satellite number (remember 100 is added for Glonass, etc)
2. Elevation angle, degrees
3. Azimuth angle, degrees
4. Seconds of the day, GPS time
5. elevation angle rate of change, degrees/sec.
6.  S6 SNR on L6
7.  S1 SNR on L1
8.  S2 SNR on L2
9.  S5 SNR on L5
10. S7 SNR on L7
11. S8 SNR on L8

The unit for all SNR data is dB-Hz.

GNSS frequencies

  • 1,2,20, and 5 are GPS L1, L2, L2C, and L5

  • 101,102 are Glonass L1 and L2

  • 201, 205, 206, 207, 208: Galileo frequencies, which are set as 1575.420, 1176.450, 1278.70, 1207.140, 1191.795 MHz

  • 302, 306, 307 : Beidou frequencies, defined as 1561.098, 1207.14, 1268.52 MHz

Additional files

  • EGM96geoidDATA.mat is stored in REFL_CODE/Files

  • station_pos.db is stored in REFL_CODE/Files

  • gpt_1wA.pickle is stored in REFL_CODE/input

We will be moving these to a single place after our short course!