Ninth ILRS AWG Meeting (Koetzing 2003)
Minutes ILRS/AWG Workshop #9
October 25-26, 2003, Koetzting, Germany
Agenda
| 1. | Welcome/Introduction (Appleby) 30-45 min (10:00 to 10:45) | ||
| Moment of silence in memory of Matti Paunonen | |||
| Announcement: All NASA Funding Questions are to be directed to D. Carter, who will be present on Tuesday | |||
| A. | Logistics - Rest Room (Appleby) | ||
| B. | Lunch and Coffee Breaks (Appleby) | ||
| C. | Note: Need hard copies or CD of all presentation material | ||
| D. | Membership Issues i.e. additions/deletions (Appleby) | ||
| E. | Sign-In List (Husson) | ||
| F. | Self-Introduction of Attendees | ||
| G. | Review any Last-Minute Changes to the Agenda (Appleby) | ||
| 2. | Review of AWG Nice Minutes (Appleby) 5 min (10:45 to 10:50) | ||
| 3. | Review of Actions Items (Appleby) 15 min (10:50 to 11:05) | ||
| 4. | IERS/ItrF Issues 1 hour (11:05 to 12:05) | ||
| A. | IERS Working Group on Site-Collocation (Zuheir) | ||
| B. | IERS and ItrF Developments/Issues (Zuheir) | ||
| 5. | Pilot Project "QC Harmonization " (Torrence) (12:05 - 12:35) | ||
| A. | Introduction (Goals) | ||
| B. | What's New? | ||
| C. | Recommendations | ||
| D. | Next Steps | ||
| LUNCH BREAK (1 hour 15 min) 12:35 - 1:50 | |||
| 6. | SINEX/Software Issues 45 min (1:50 to 2:35) | ||
| A. | SITE/ID block and SITE/ECCENtrICITIES Status (Torrence) | ||
| B. | Handling of Multi Color Range Data Issues (Torrence) | ||
| C. | SINEX Issues (NCL) | ||
| D. | LAGEOS and Etalon CoM corrections (Appleby, Otsubo, Pavlis) | ||
| E. | CoM Implementation Issues (Pearlman) | ||
| 7. | ILRS Announcements 30 min (2:35 - 3:05) | ||
| A. | ILRS related presentations (Pearlman) | ||
| 1. | Washington DC Laser Workshop Proceedings (Pearlman) | ||
| 2. | Annual Reports 2002 and 2003 (Pearlman) | ||
| 3. | Any others science papers/reports?? | ||
| AFTERNOON BREAK (CRUMPETS AND TEA ANYONE?) (3:05 - 3:35) | |||
| 8. | Pilot Project "Benchmarking " (1 hours) 3:35 to 4:35 | ||
| A. | Introduction (Pavlis) | ||
| 1. | Goals | ||
| 2. | Requirement for being a product contributor | ||
| 3. | Contributions to Date | ||
| B. | Individual contributions | ||
| - | ASI (Luceri) | ||
| - | JCET (Pavlis) | ||
| - | GFZ (Koenig) | ||
| - | DGFI (Mueller) | ||
| C. | Future Contributors | ||
| - | BKG (Maria) | ||
| - | CRL (Otsubo) | ||
| - | GEOS (Govind/Dawson) | ||
| - | NERC (Appleby) | ||
| - | GRGS?? | ||
| - | anyone else? | ||
| D. | Benchmark Results | ||
| 1. | Solution A - (Pavlis) | ||
| 2. | Solution D | ||
| a. Range Corrections (Pavlis) | |||
| b. EOP and POS Differences (Luceri) | |||
| E. | Issues/Future (Discussion) | ||
| 1. | Why are solutions "A" some different? | ||
| 2. | Our are requirements realistic | ||
| 3. | Comparisons of Orbits "D" | ||
| 4. | Other Issues | ||
| 5. | Next Steps | ||
| 9. | CFP , formerly pilot project "positioning + earth orientation " 2.5 hours (4:35 - end of day) carry over till Monday will be necessary | ||
| A. | Introduction (Chairman) | ||
| 1. | Goals | ||
| 2. | Status of solutions | ||
| B. | Individual contributions | ||
| - | ASI (Luceri) | ||
| - | DGFI (Horst/Angermann/Kelm) | ||
| - | GFZ (Koenig) | ||
| - | NERC (Appleby) | ||
| C. | Status report from other Analysis Centers | ||
| - | BKG (Maria) | ||
| - | CRL (Otsubo) | ||
| - | Geosciences (Govind/Dawson) | ||
| - | GRGS?? | ||
| - | IAAK?? | ||
| - | JCET (Pavlis) | ||
| - | NERC (Appleby) | ||
| END OF FIRST DAY | |||
| BEGINNING OF 2ND DAY (Monday) at 9:00 AM | |||
| (Opening and any outstanding issues from Sunday) | |||
| 9. | Finish CFP | ||
| D. | Comparisons/combinations/QC | ||
| - | ItrF (Zuheir) | ||
| - | ASI (Luceri) | ||
| - | DGFI (Mueller/Angermann/Kelm) | ||
| - | JCET (Pavlis) | ||
| - | NCL (Nurutdinov) | ||
| - | QC of coordinates using the orbit (Husson/Reis) | ||
| E. | Combination Selection Process (chairman) | ||
| - | Are we ready to select the prime and back-up ILRS combination centers? | ||
| F. | Issues | ||
| G. | Future of "positioning + earth orientation" | ||
| H. | Provision of the CFP status report to the General Assembly and the Governing Board (Appleby) | ||
| MORNING and/or LUNCH BREAK | |||
| 10. | Miscellaneous | ||
| A. | Mitigation of Funding Issues (Pavlis) | ||
| B. | Minimum Observations Per Normal Point (Torrence, Otsubo) | ||
| C. | Zimmerwald 2 Color Results (Gurtner) | ||
| D. | Station Qualification (Pearlman) | ||
| E. | Dynamic tracking Priorities (Pearlman) | ||
| F. | Web Site Activities (Pearlman) | ||
| 1. | Current - New Station Pages | ||
| 2. | Future - MyStationPerformance.Com Phase II | ||
| 3. | Future - MyMission.Com | ||
| 4. | Suggestions/Comments from the Analysts (discussion) | ||
| G. | Forum for discussing Station Coordinate Issues and/or Station Performance Problems | ||
| H. | Future Pilot Projects (Appleby) | ||
| 1. | Orbits in SP3 format | ||
| 2. | Geocenter time series | ||
| 3. | Others?? | ||
| I. | Meeting Pilot Project DEADLINES | ||
| J. | Are we prepared for the follow-on ILRS workshop? | ||
| K. | Any Remaining Issues | ||
| 11. | Business Meeting - (Appleby) 10 minutes | ||
| Next AWG meeting - Proposal: 22-23 April 2004 in Nice, before EGU | |||
| SLR Workshop, San Fernando, Spain, June 2004 | |||
| 12. | Review of Action Items (Torrence) 10 minutes | ||
| 13. | Closure (Appleby) 5 minutes | ||
Sunday October 25, 2003
Opening
Welcome by Appleby. Thanks to Schreiber for making the arrangements for the meeting. Appleby asked for a moment of silence for Matti Paunonen who passed away. Comment that Ron Noomen is recovering from back problems, but has been in contact with Graham Appleby. Additionally Van Husson and Mike Pearlman are attending the meeting at their own expense because of severe funding problems, and Van cannot formally make any comments.
Each of the attendees introduced themselves
Review of the previous meeting's action items.
IERS Matera survey meeting
Richter reviewed summarized the IERS survey meeting October 23-24 that was held in Matera, Italy. There are now 72 space geodetic sites for which there are multiple technologies present. The local survey for these sites can be described in three levels: full characterization; no information; inconsistent information. The meeting recommended that the local survey for all space geodetic sites be fully characterized and accurate to the millimeter level.
A discussion ensued about what the correct IERS 2003 conventions for loading and Earth center of figure motion are, and what should be incorporated into the station position determination. Pavlis was given an action item to resolve this issue.
( at this point the meeting departed from formally following the agenda.)
Benchmark
Pavlis introduced this agenda topic. Pavlis suggested benchmark "D" be used in the evaluation, and benchmark "C" be graded as pass/fail. Torrence suggested there be an additional benchmark, benchmark "0", consisting of integration of the initial state vector with GM and C20, C30 and C40 only, no other force model perturbations. The final group concensus was to use benchmarks "0", "A", "C" and "D" in the assessment. A suggested weighting critera is: [ 30% "0" + 10% "A" + 10% "C" + 50% "D" ].
ASI: Luceri presented results of ASI's benchmark version D comparison with solutions from GFZ, ASI, and JCET. There was a brief discussion about whether the EOP rates were to be included in the solutions; there are to be no EOP rate adjustments included in the solutions, partial derivatives for the rates can be constructed to be included in the SINEX file, but not adjusted in the solution.
GEOS: Ramesh Govind reported that 28 day very weakly constrained solutions have been submitted to CDDISA using Starlette and Stella with the CHAMP/GRACE gravity models.
NERC: Graham Appleby reported that NERC intends to do benchmark solutions "0", "A", "C" and "D" by November, 2003.
Any analysis groups that have not yet submitted solutions for the benchmark test need to do so to be considered for participation in official ILRS AWG products. It was b suggested that groups make benchmark contributions before the end of November 2003.
ILRS Announcements: Mike Pearlman
Mike Pearlman talked a bit about NASA's future funding profile for SLR activities. The funding projection was based upon the axiom of SLR2000 deployment in the current time frame resulting in decreased network operation costs. Mike asked that any detailed questions be addressed to David Carter during the ILRS meeting in few days. The 13 th Laser Ranging Workshop report and the ILRS 2002 Annual Report should be published in November 2003.
Mike presented the current station qualification criteria, and solicited comments from the AWG with respect to the definition and use of "associate station". The group generally agreed with the definition.
Mike gave a brief presentation on the results of an ILRS Central Bureau science analysis survey.
CFP, formerly pilot project "positioning + earth orientation": Graham Appleby
Graham introduced this agenda item. Many analysis centers have submitted the 28 day station position and daily EOP solutions to the ILRS. The analysis centers from ASI and DGFI have also performed preliminary combination solutions with those solutions.
Contributions for the CFP:
ASI: Cinzia Luceri reported that ASI has automated the solution process so that every Tuesday a solution is "pushed" to the CDDIS. The solutions submitted, up to this point, do not use data from stations that have fewer than 50 LAGEOS normal points per week, nor from associate stations. Cinzia reported finding differences between data downloaded from CDDIS and EDC, so ASI downloads data from both data centers and then merges the data into a file that is used for their analyses.
The attendees discussed whether to use the data from associate stations and simply down weight (at perhaps 1000m) or not. There could be "political" ramifications due to the use or not of the data from associate stations. Additional comments were that the IERS EOP products should be "first-class"; the best that the ILRS AWG can produce, and, as such, questionable data probably should not be used for those products. Werner Gurtner suggested that a "second tier" of solution be based upon the standard IERS EOP product which would include data from associate stations, and from lower data yield stations.
A discussion ensued about the need for timely submission of data to have the data included in the IERS EOP product solutions.
DGFI: Horst Mueller reported DGFI has been doing weekly solutions beginning in June 2003. Analysis of EOP interpolation schemes show jumps of about 0.2 microsec comparing linear and Hermite interpolation.
GFZ: Rolf Koenig reported their analysis is almost automatic. GFZ identified a need to automate QC checks of input SINEX files to determine whether there are any implicit constraints. Further participation in the CFP project has enabled the identification of subtle errors in the processing.
Also (cf.ASI) showed different values of EOP.
NERC: Graham Appleby reported that NERC is now automating procedures for producing 28 day solutions.
BKG: Mareyen Maria reported BKG has recently updated their processing computers to a Linux environment working on PC. The change requires updates to the UTOPIA orbit determination and parameter estimation system and other supporting software package.
JAXA: Toshimichi Otsubo is working on upgrading JAXA's processing software and will submit solutions to the CFP pilot project.
Geoscience Australia: Ramesh Govind reported that he intends to submit benchmark solutions soon, and then contribute to the CFP pilot project.
JCET: Erricos Pavlis reported JCET has not submitted solutions to the CFP pilot project as JCET is making 7-day EOP solutions for NEOS and JPL in an ItrF2000 frame. Erricos' suggestion of establishing a new product for the CFP and combination projects; a 7 day EOP solution within a fixed ItrF2000 frame. JCET will be able to submit weakly constrained weekly solutions to the ILRS in the near future.
The attendees discussed the suggestion to move to a 7-day arc length, as the IERS is the main customer for rapid product. Marcus Rotheracher had given a presentation to the previous AWG meeting (Nice, France, April 2003) on the IERS establishing a combination research center which wishes to use 7 day solutions from each of the space geodetic techniques to produce time series of EOP and site locations. The current CFP 28 day arc length was established to follow-on to the benchmark project. DGFI showed a 10 year time series of latitude, longitude and height of Yaraggadee from 7 day solutions as evidence for stable site position recovery using 7 day arcs instead of 28 day arcs. Graham Appleby reported there seems to mounting evidence that stable 7 day solutions are achievable. Following more discussion, the attendees agreed to begin submitting 7 day solutions instead of 28 day solutions to the ILRS/CDDIS for use by the ILRS combination groups. There was general agreement that this transition should begin a soon as possible.
Combination Centers:
ASI: Has automated the combination analysis procedure and uses MatLab to form the combination solution.
DGFI: Rainer Kelm reported that the combination of normal equations is done automatically. The solution is formed by using minimal constraints over three core stations.
NCL : Konstantin Nurutdinov reported using the TANYA software to compare 28 day solution series from NERC, ASI, DGFI, GFZ and the DGFI, ASI and NCL combination solutions with the IGS EOP time series.
IERS/ItrF Analysis of SLR products: Zuheir Altimimi
Zuheir presented his analysis of the ASI SLR solution. He emphatically stated the need for SLR site positions information for the determination of Earth center of figure in the ItrF.
Cinzia Luceri showed a geocenter series (C 1,0 (C , S) 1,1 ) in ItrF2000 which matched the Helmert transformation coefficients for individual 7 day solutions compared to a long arc solution in the ItrF2000 frame which was mapped to the 7 day arc epochs.
Future Pilot Projects : Graham Appleby
Graham opened a discussion about whether the ILRS should try to develop other products such as orbits in SP3 format, or a geocenter time series.
Business Meeting : Graham Appleby
The attendees discussed when the next AWG meeting should take place: either before the EGU meeting in Nice, France on 22-23 April 2004 and/or before the SLR Workshop, San Fernando, Spain, in June 2004.
The consensus was to have a meeting before both meetings at times to be determined later.
ILRS AWG action items
| Remaining open from previous meeting: | |
| Husson/Torrence | develop references for benchmarking (June 15) |
| Husson | evaluate individual benchmark solutions (June 30) |
| Appleby/Otsubo | complete and provide satellite center-of-mass correction table (station dependent) |
| New action items: | |
| Pavlis | What are the correct IERS 2003 conventions for loading and Earth center of figure motion, and what should be incorporated into the station position determination. |
| Husson/Pavlis | republish benchmark announcement to include solution "0" before November 5, 2003. |
| All | submit solutions for benchmark solution "0" by the end of November 2003. |
| All | submit 7 day solutions defined s the IGS week, keep the same schedule as for 28 day solution submission: process the data Sunday/Monday submit the solutions Tuesday. |
| All combination centers | continue to form combination solutions. |
| Husson/Pavlis/Torrence | results of benchmark analysis by the end of 2003. |
| Husson | minutes |
| Angermann | extend SINEX format checker for ILRS purposes |
| Appleby/Otsubo | complete and provide satellite center-of-mass correction table (station dependent) |
| Eanes | implement ItrF2000 in QC analysis |
| Glotov | implement ItrF2000 in QC analysis |
| Husson | finalize (other than 1999) and announce table with LAGEOS data problems (SINEX format) |
| Husson | develop single consolidated range bias report |
| Husson/Torrence | develop references for benchmarking (June 15) => "0/30%, A/10%, C/10%, D/50%" |
| Husson | evaluate individual benchmark solutions (June 30) => end of December, 2003 |
| Husson | develop automatic system for assessing "Core" stations for AWG purposes |
| Noomen | ask IERS for specification ILRS products for IERS purposes |
| Noomen | install new TDF |
| Pearlman | check data resupply process (i.e., old entries) |
| Shelus (new) | distinguisment between ILRS ACs and AACs |
| QC analysts | report updates in used coordinates (cf. action item Noomen) |
| Pavlis | determine the status of semi-diurnal and diurnal geocenter and loading models |
| Husson/Pavlis | update the benchmark description to include benchmark "0" by November 5, 2003 |
| analysts | submit solutions for benchmark solution "0" by the end of November 2003 |
| analysts | modify solutions for CFP project to be 7 day arcs aligned with the "GPS week" (Sun-Sat) beginning mid-Novermber; station data threshold: 10 NP |
| analysts | if possible, participate in analysis preliminary of the new Mt. Stromlo data |
| Appleby | report to the GB that the AWG recommends that the minimum number of range measurements in a NP be 1. |
| Appleby/Husson/Torrence | minutes ASAP |
| AWG | selection of prime combination center is postponed |
| analysts | examine the effect of the sigma edit level for forming normal points |
| Altimimi | will continue to analyze the CFP and combination products |
ILRS AWG Attendees
| Attendee | Org | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Graham Appleby | NERC | graham.appleby@nerc.ac.uk |
| 2. Richard Biancale | CNES | richard.biancale@cnes.fr |
| 3. Ramesh Govind | GEOS | rameshgovind@ga.gov.au |
| 4. John Dawson | GEOS | john.dawson@ga.gov.au |
| 5. Toshimichi Otsubo | CRL | otsubo@crl.go.jp |
| 6. Erricos Pavlis | JCET | epavlis@umbc.edu |
| 7. Cinzia Luceri | ASI | luceri@asi.it |
| 8. Horst Mueller | DGFI | horst.mueller@dgfi.badw.de |
| 9. Detlef Angermann | DGFI | angerman@dgfi.badw.de |
| 10. Michael Gerstl | DGFI | gerstl@dgfi.badw.de |
| 11. Rainer Kelm | DGFI | kelm@dgfi.badw.de |
| 12. Mark Torrence | RITSS | mtorrenc@geodesy2.gsfc.nasa.gov |
| 13. Mareyen Maria | BKG | maria.mareyen@bkg.bund.de |
| 14. Rolf Koenig | GFZ | rolf.koenig@gfz-potsdam.de |
| 15. Mike Pearlman | CfA | pearlman@cfa.harvard.edu |
| 16. Van Husson | HTSI | van.husson@honeywell-tsi.com |
| 17. Zuheir Altamimi | IGN | altamimi@ensg.ign.fr |
| 18. Konstantin Nurutdinov | NCL | konstantin.nurutdinov@ncl.ac.uk |
| 19. Werner Gurtner | AIUB | gurtner@aiub.unibe.ch |
| 20. Bernd Richter | IERS | richter@iers.org |
| 21. Pippo Bianco | ASI | bianco@asi.it |
| 22. Ludwig Combrinck | HART | ludwig@hartrao.ac.za |
| 23. Attie Combrink | HART | attie@hartrao.ac.za |
