ILRS NEWG Meeting (San Fernando 2004)

San Fernando, Spain
Sunday, June 6, 2004
10:00-11:00

Agenda

- Engineering Data File / XML: Very short Overview;
o All Details will be covered in the presentation of Kalvis
- Daylight Tracking for ALL Stations:
o Which stations have which problems ?
o Which assistance is possible / needed / desired ?
o Daylight capability as necessary requirement for operational status ?
- kHz SLR:
o Support / assistance / cooperation for planned / upcoming stations ?
o Idea of a ^\kHz Meeting^] ?
o Goals: Bring more kHz stations aa soon as possible into operation
- Any other business ?

Notes

EDF - Engineering Data File

CALIBRATION File Data is available already - or will come shortly - from: Riga, Potsdam, Graz, RGO. Detailed information how to create / send such XML files is already available at: http://www.astr.lu.lv/edf :

  • Contains EDF creation support packages; scripts; examples etc.
  • A Link will be added on ILRS Home Page;

Next Steps Planned:

  • Graz will implement a fully automatic XML CAL File Creation and Upload within next few weeks;
  • About 5 other stations expressed their interest to join the EDF system;
  • They will then get all info necessary to start with;
  • This should result in a good test base for the further development.

The whole procedure should be easy and fast to implement, without disturbing any present setup at stations.

Daylight tracking issues

We are still missing a number of good stations during daylight; but we think that daylight tracking is very important to get the full orbits.

As in some of these SLR stations work is already going on to achieve daylight capability, we intend to support their effort - giving information, technical details, or also material where necessary - so that we could have MORE daylight tracking SLR stations available next year (Shanghai, Beijing, Changchun, ???)

kHz Tracking / Planned Meeting

A number of SLR stations now have plans or b interests to upgrade to kHz SLR; in order to exchange details and information about possible problems, solutions etc., we are planning a small technical meeting in Graz in October 2004; the meeting is intended for about 10-20 participants, and will last probably 2 days or so; the goal is to have more kHz SLR stations in the community as soon as possible.

NP Issues

Some months ago, a small program was distributed to the community; it showed how to check NPs before sending out, how to avoid trivial errors etc.

We will perform now a poll for all stations, which checks are done now on these NPs, and how the NPs are formed; an independent check / comparison between a selected set of Full Rate Data and the transmitted NPs will also be performed.

Counting Passes vs. Segments  

Another point of discussion: What is a pass? Some stations send each segment separately, some wait until the whole pass is finished; in the statistics now the segments are counted only, and only the number of segments will be published; it was agreed that the "Minutes of Data" should be the more appropriate term of tracking results for a SLR station.