Since 1992 the AIUB operates the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE). It is a consortium of
- the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB, Bern, Switzerland)
- the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo, Wabern, Switzerland),
- the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG. Frankfurt a. M., Germany), and
- the lnstltut für Astronomische und Physikalische Geodäsie, Technische Universität München (IAPG/TUM, Munich, Germany).
CODE contributes with its activities to the following scientific services:
Global Analysis Center to the International GNSS Service (IGS)
(GNSS stands for Global Navigation Satellite Systems)
A fully consistent processing of the measurements of the two currently fully operational GNSS, namely GPS and GLONASS, CODE supports three product lines of the IGS with different latency:
- final series (available after two weeks includes about 240 stations),
- rapid series (available after 18 hours considers about 130 stations), and
- ultra-rapid series (4 updates per day with a latency of three hours includes about 90 stations.
Orbits, Earth rotation parameters, satellite and receiver clock corrections, station coordinates, troposphere and ionosphere models, as well as numerous other products are generated on a regular basis.
Apart from these operational product series the entire interval of IGS data availability is reprocessed with the latest processing standards. In this way self-consistent long time series of GNSS products are generated.
Official website of the International GNSS Service (IGS)
Analysis Center to the IGS multi-GNSS extension project (IGS MGEX)
CODE is going to extent its solution to a full five-system solution including GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, and QZSS satellites. Orbits together with consistent Earth rotation parameter and satellite clock corrections are made available together with the related biases with a latency of two weeks.
Official website of the IGS multi-GNSS extension project (IGS MGEX)
Analysis Center to the EUREF Permanent Network (EPN)
A European network of GNSS stations is regularly processed by currently 16 analysis centers. Many of them are using the Bernese GNSS Software package. CODE is one of the EUREF Analysis Centers and processes a EPN subnetwork of about 50 stations daily basis weekly coordinate solution is computed and submitted to the EUREF. In addition, daily troposphere parameter estimates (zenith path delays) for all stations are delivered.
Official website of the EUREF Permanent Network (EPN)
Associated Analysis Center to the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS)
(ILRS is a scientific service to coordinate laser measurements to dedicated satellites)
CODE compares the most recent SLR measurements with its rapid orbits for the GLONASS satellites and reports a comprehensive statistics to the station operators in order to give a feedback on the quality of their measurements.
At the same time, this statistics provides an independent feedback on the quality of the GNSS-derived orbits.
Official website of the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS)
The result files are available at http://www.aiub.unibe.ch/download. Please consult the related README-file for the directory structure. When using these products to generate your own results please use the related references:
