Projects

Presently, the GNSS research program of the ROB comprises the following topics:

• Integration of Belgium in international geodetic networks. In order to achieve this goal, the ROB installed in Belgium a network of permanent GNSS receiver stations. In addition to the processing of our own data, we also process the data originating from international GNSS networks.
• Determination of slow ground deformations using GNSS measurements (Study of local and regional tectonics)
• Study of the error sources affecting high precision GNSS positioning.
• Study of the effect of the atmospheric (ionospheric and tropospheric) refraction on the GNSS signal propagation and the errors induced on the GNSS observations.
• Monitoring of the Earth's atmosphere (Ionosphere and troposphere)
• Integration of Belgium in the international network used for the realization of UTC (Universal Time Coordinated), using our atomic clocks linked to the network through GNSS measurements.

We participate to the following programs/projects:

EUREF:

EUREF is the IAG (International Association of Geodesy) Reference Frame Sub-Commission for Europe and deals with the definition, realization and maintenance of the European Reference Frame - the geodetic infrastructure for multinational projects requiring precise geo-referencing - in close cooperation with the IAG components (Services, Commissions, and Inter-commission projects) and EuroGeographics, the consortium of the National Mapping Agencies (NMA) in Europe. EUREF has been developing a set of activities related to the establishment and maintenance of European Terrestrial Reference System (ETRS89) and European Vertical Reference System (EVRS). A key instrument in maintaining ETRS89 is the EUREF Permanent Network (EPN), a network of continuous observing GNSS stations covering the European continent.

International GNSS Service:

The International GNSS Service (IGS), is a voluntary federation of more than 200 worldwide agencies that pool resources and permanent GPS & GLONASS station data to generate precise GPS & GLONASS products. The IGS is committed to providing the highest quality data and products as the standard for GNSS in support of Earth science research, multidisciplinary applications, and education. You can think of the IGS as the highest-precision international civilian GPS community.

Solar Terrestrial Centre of Excellence:

The Solar-Terrestrial Center of Excellence is a scientific project which aims to create an international expert center for Solar and Solar-Terrestrial research and services. The STCE clusters the know-how of three Belgian Federal institutes: Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI) and Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BISA). and aims to study the relation between the Sun and the Earth.

EUMETNET - E-GVAP:

The EUMETNET GPS water VApour Program (E-GVAP) is a program running under the aegis of the European Network of Meteorological Service (EUMETNET). This project has been setup to collect near real-time (NRT) ground-based GNSS tropospheric delay and water vapour estimates on the European scale. This information is provided this information to EUMETNET partners for operational meteorology. The ultimate goal of the project is to improve weather forecasts. This is achieved in close collaboration with the geodetic community who operate the 11 analysis centres that provides the NRT tropospheric delay estimates. ROB is one of these GNSS analysis centres. This is done in close collaboration with the geodetic community in Europe.

TAI/UTC:

The Basis of the legal time in the world is UTC, the Universal Time Coordinated. It is computed by the BIPM from a weighted average of atomic clocks distributed around the world; five of these clocks are located in the time laboratory of the ROB. The clocks of the different laboratories are compared using GNSS. The research developed at the ROB aims to improve the precision of this comparsion technique in order to be able to compare the most precise atomic clocks in the world. The ROB also provides for Belgium a realization of UTC, named UTC(ORB), which is therefore the most precise time for Belgium and which is disseminated via the Internet (NTP).

Regional Dense Velocity Fields:

The goal of the IAG Working Group (WG) on "Regional Dense Velocity Fields" is to increase the density of the latest realization of the ITRS and provide regional dense velocity information in a common global reference frame. For that purpose, working group members join efforts with the IAG regional reference frame sub-commissions and analysis groups processing data from local/regional continuous and episodic GNSS stations.
At the same time, the WG studies the strengths and shortcomings of local/regional and continuous/episodic GNSS solutions to determine site velocities and defines optimal strategies for the combination of regional and global position and velocity solutions.
More details on the WG are available from http://epncb.oma.be/IAG/.

SX5 7th Frame Work Project:

The scientific community presently needs dual-frequency receivers for precise positioning applications in order to eliminate the (first order) ionospheric delay, and it uses mainly carrier phase measurements which are less corrupted by multipath effects than range measurements. However, GALILEO will offer one dedicated signal superior to all other signals that are or will be available in space, namely the broadband signal E5. This signal, as well as its sub-carriers E5a and E5b, have cm-level noise as well as a multipath error by far smaller than the multipath errors on all other signals. This drastically increased range precision will allow high precision combined code-and-carrier positioning on only one frequency. In addition, such a single frequency system will allow elimination of the ionospheric propagation delay which is major point in enhancing positional accuracy over long distances.
The goal of this collaborative project (in reply to the call GALILEO.2008.1.3.1 "GALILEO and EGNOS for Scientific Applications") is to develop a software application for precise positioning based on an E5 GALILEO receiver primarily targeting scientific users and to exploit the benefits derived by the use of the GALILEO E5 signals with respect to services to the scientific community. The project duration is one year from Feb. 2010 on.