Precise Orbit Determination of GPS using Bernese GPS Software

The International GNSS Service (IGS) has managed the global GNSS network and provided the highest quality GNSS data and products, which are GPS ephemerides, clock information and Earth orientation parameter, as the standard for GNSS. An important part of its works is to provide the precise orbits of GPS satellites. GPS satellites send their orbit information (broadcast ephemerides) to users and their accuracies are approximately 1.6 meters level, but those accuracies are not sufficient for the high precise applications which require millimeters precision. The current accuracies of the IGS final orbits are within 5 centimeters level and they are used for Earth science, meteorology, space science, and they are made by the IGS analysis centers and combined by the IGS analysis center coordinator. The techniques making the products are very difficult and require the high technology. The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) studies to make the IGS products. In this study, we developed our own processing strategy and made GPS ephemerides using Bernese GPS software Ver. 5.0. We used the broadcast ephemerides as the initial orbits and processed the globally distributed 150 IGS stations. The result shows about 6 to 8 centimeters in root-mean-squares related to IGS final orbits in each day during a week. We expect that this study can contribute to secure our own high technology.