Integrity Monitoring of IGEX-98 Data,Part I: Availability

The International GLONASS Experiment 1998 (IGEX-98) was the first international tracking campaign of the Russian counterpart to the Global Positioning System (GPS), GLONASS. Started in October 1998, the campaign was originally scheduled to last for three months. However, the launch of additional GLONASS satellites and a widespread enthusiasm among the participants led to an indefinite continuation of the campaign on a “best effort” basis. At the Delft University of Technology, the data of six IGEX-98 stations have been analyzed in detail with integrity monitoring software, developed at the Department of Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning of the University. The software aims to detect outliers and slips in code and phase observations in real time. In addition, the software also allows the validation of the information contained in the broadcast navigation messages. The results of the IGEX-98 data analyses will be presented in a three-part series. In the second part, GLONASS outlier and slips statistics will be discussed, while in the third part the anomaly detection results of the GLONASS and GPS messages will be shown. In this first part of the series, however, the most basic of all statistics will be considered: a simple day-to-day count of the number of GLONASS and GPS observations. Although simple, this statistic yields a surprising amount of information both on the availability of the GLONASS satellites and on the peculiarities of some of the receiver makes participating in the IGEX-98 campaign. ? 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.