AUSPOS - Online GPS Processing System Summary

AUSPOS provides users with the facility to submit via the Internet, dual frequency geodetic quality GPS RINEX data observed in a 'static' mode and receive rapid turn-around precise coordinates. The service is free and provides both International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) and Geocentric Datum of Australia (GDA94) coordinates. This Internet service takes advantage of both the International GPS Service (IGS) product range and the IGS GPS network and works with GPS data collected anywhere on Earth. Aspects of the design, implementation, usage and future plans of this system are reviewed.

Increasingly the spatial information sector is turning to the Internet as a tool to aid their activities. Both public and private sector organisations are developing, promoting and delivering their services and products using the Internet as a medium. Organisations that use the Global Positioning System (GPS) are no exception and an Internet search using the keyword ‘GPS’ currently reveals thousands of GPS related web sites. These sites provide information on GPS related applications, GPS hardware and software and GPS related services. The field of high precision geodetic GPS is also well represented with many scientific, private sector and national geodetic agencies maintaining useful and informative geodetic GPS related web pages.

Geoscience Australia's Geodesy section is responsible for the national level geodetic infrastructure throughout Australia and its territories. As part of this role it maintains a network of permanent GPS receivers throughout both Australia and the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT). This GPS network makes an important contribution to the national GPS infrastructure and further contributes to the international GPS community through the International GPS Service (IGS).

As high precision global geodetic GPS technology has evolved, processing and analysis software has become more sophisticated and in general more automated. This development has now seen the implementation of Internet based geodetic GPS processing services, the first being NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Auto-Gipsy Service (JPL, 2001) and later the Scrippts Orbit and Permanent Array Centre (SOPAC) coordinate generator (SOPAC, 2001).

• See the complete AUSPOS System Description [PDF_1.6Mb]

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