A new version 2.12 of the ‘BKG NTRIP Client’ (BNC) will be available on April, 18th 2016 from http://igs.bkg.bund.de/ntrip/download.
Originally developed in cooperation of the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) and the Czech Technical University (CTU) with a focus on multi-stream real-time access to GNSS observations, the software has been substantially extended. Its primary objective is the promotion of Open Standards as recommended by the Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM). Implemented RTCM messages comprise satellite orbit and clock corrections, code and phase observation biases, and the Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) of the ionosphere.
Beside its Graphical User Interface (GUI), the real-time software for Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms now comes with complete Command Line Interface (CLI) and considerable post processing functionality. RINEX Version 3 file editing & Quality Check (QC) with full support of Galileo, BeiDou, and SBAS – besides GPS and GLONASS – is part of the new features.
Comparison of satellite orbit/clock files in SP3 format is another new feature of BNC.
BNC version 2.12 now allows a simultaneous multi-station Precise Point Positioning (PPP) for real-time displacement-monitoring of entire reference station networks.
BNC version 2.12 generates RINEX version 3.03 observation and navigation files to support near real-time GNSS post processing applications. Whenever BNC starts to generate RINEX observation files, it first tries to retrieve information needed for RINEX headers from so-called public RINEX skeleton files (skl files), which are derived from site logs. Therefore, BKG provides the current system observation types (sot files) per station: ftp://igs.bkg.bund.de/NTRIP/obstypes/. Please note, that we will provide from the 18th of April 2016 on sot files with BDS frequency bands consistent to the definition in RINEX version 3.03.
Please note further, that old configuration files cannot be used in any case without problems. Nevertheless, BNC 2.12 download is coming with a large set of examples for all the different applications, which can be easily adapted introducing a valid user account.
Please, do not hesitate to contact igs-ip@bkg.bund.de in case of any problems.
Sincerely,
Georg Weber(1), Leoš Mervart(2), Andrea Stürze(1), Axel Rülke(1), Dirk Stöcker(3)
(1) Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG), Frankfurt, Germany
(2) Czech Technical University (CTU), Department of Geomatics, Prague, Czech Republic
(3) Alberding GmbH, Wildau, Germany