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File Naming Conventions

The IGS currently supports three major versions of the RINEX standard, RINEX v.2, RINEX v.3, and RINEX v.4. Every station operator is encouraged to transmit the latest available major/minor version. Newly proposed IGS CORS must submit their data in RINEX 3.04 at a minimum.

RINEX v.4/v.3

RINEX v.3 and RINEX v.4 data must be transmitted in the following file naming convention:

Observation and Meteorological Files

SSSSMRCCC_S_YYYYDDDHHMM_DDU_FRU_DT.fff.cmp

Navigation Files

SSSSMRCCC_S_YYYYDDDHHMM_DDU_DT.fff.cmp

All elements of the main body of the file name must contain capitalised ASCII letters or numbers and all elements are of a fixed length and separated by an underscore “_”. The file type and compression fields (extension) use a period “.” as a separator and must be lowercase ASCII characters. Fields must be padded with zeros to fill the field width. In order to further reduce the size of observation files, the Hatanaka compression toolkit should be used.

The Nine-character IGS Station Name

  • SSSS: 4-character (existing) IGS station name
  • M: monument or marker number (0-9)
  • R: receiver number (0-9)
  • CCC: ISO-3166 country or region code (alpha-3)

Example: POTS00DEU

Note: To align with the SINEX format, marker and monument numbers other than 0 are currently not supported |

Data source

Supported are R (from receiver using vendor or other software) and S (RTCM or another stream format)

Start time

  • YYYY: Gregorian year (e.g., 2024)
  • DDD: Day of the year (e.g., 260)
  • HHMM: Hours and minutes of the day (e.g., 1000)

It is preferred to use the nominal start time of the file. However, using the actual start time of a file is acceptable.

File Period

  • DD: File period
  • U: Unit of the file period
  • Accepted are 15M, 01H, 01D

Data Frequency

  • FR: Data frequency
  • U: Unit of the data frequency
  • Accepted are 01S for high-rate data and 30S or 15S for hourly/daily data

Not required for RINEX navigation files

Data Type

  • Two characters represent the type
  • D: Satellite System (allowed are G, R, E, C, J,S,Iand M(ixed))
  • T: RINEX file type (allowed are O, N, M)

Example: MO

Format of the file. Supported are rnx (RINEX) and crx (compressed RINEX)

Compression format. Supported is gzip (gz).

RINEX v.2

RINEX v.2 (Gurtner, 2007) data must be transmitted in the following file naming convention:

ssssdddf.yyt

The table below describes each element of this file naming convention. Stations transmitting RINEX v.2 files are encouraged to provide gzip compressed files. Even if files are sent in Z-compression, IGS data centres will recompress them and make them publicly available using gzip.

The 4-character IGS station name

Example: pots

Day of the year of the first record

Example: 260

File sequence number/character within day

  • Daily files (30 seconds): f=0
  • Hourly files (30 seconds):
    • f=a (00:00:00 to 00:59:30),
    • f=b (01:00:00 to 01:59:30),
    • ...
    • f=x (23:00:00 to 23:59:30)
  • High-rate files (15M, 1 Hz):
    • f=a00 (00:00:00 to 00:14:59)
    • f=a15 (00:15:00 to 00:29:59) ...
    • f=m30 (12:30:00 to 12:44:59) ...
    • f=x45 (23:45:00 to 23:59:59)

Two-digit year (e.g., 24)

File Type, allowed file types are:

  • O: Observation file
  • D: Hatanaka compressed observation file
  • N: GPS navigation file
  • G: GLONASS navigation file
  • M: Meteorological file