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

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 fur Kartographie und Geodasie (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.