PyGLog: a Python software for handling GNSS metadata and log-files

Abstract

Abstract We describe a software developed to handle metadata of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations. The number of available GNSS sites in the Euro-Mediterranean and African area has grown significantly in the last decade, pushing toward the development of automatic procedures for the analysis of the raw observations. Currently >3000 stations are routinely processed at the GPS data analysis center based on the GAMIT/GLOBK software operating at INGV-Bologna. Here we describe a software, written in Python, developed with the goal of processing metadata associated with continuously operating GNSS stations. The metadata is, generally, an ASCII file associated with each station, containing information about the geodetic antenna, the receiver, the radome model and the antenna offset (distance between the phase center of the antenna and the reference point, depending on the mechanical structure of the antenna mount). Commonly, but not always, GNSS stations metadata are provided in the form of log-files, which are however most of time compiled by human operators and later made available on the web for public access. On the research side these metadata are fundamental for a proper data processing and an accurate estimate of geophysical information, and need to be converted in a particular standard format (station info file), depending on the software adopted for data reduction, with coherent information to not stall the elaboration. The check of metadata coming from a huge amount of GNSS stations from different networks is a time consuming task, which compromises the efficiency of the research job. The software presented in this work aims at automatically update the repository of thousands of station metadata files, checking the coherence of the information and creating the station info files, in different formats, needed for processing, thus requiring a minimum effort for data processing to the operators.