Precise orbit determination and station position estimation using DORIS RINEX data

Within the frame of the International DORIS Service (IDS), the CNES/CLS Analysis Center contributes to the geodetic and geophysical research activity through DORIS data analysis. A strategy was developed for the processing of the measurements of the DGXX instruments in RINEX/DORIS format, as it will be the only type of DORIS format made available by CNES, starting with the Jason-3 and Sentinel-3A missions launched at the beginning of the year 2016. The purpose of this paper is to describe the method implemented in the CNES/CLS Analysis Center orbit computation software GINS to process RINEX/DORIS data files. Phase measurements are converted into Doppler counts and then into relative satellite-to-beacon velocities. In this approach, the iono-free phase centers have to be used as the end points of the measurement instead of the 2GHz phase centers. Given that, the processing results with RINEX/DORIS data are similar to the ones obtained with the usual doris2.2 data, except the scale factor of the Terrestrial Reference Frame in the 7-parameter transform of the network solution. We also address the issue of the scale factor increase from 2012 observed by all the IDS Analysis Centers in their solutions for the ITRF2014 combination. We show that the scale increase in 2012 is dependent on the type of DORIS data used. This scale increase is also enhanced by a bias due to the inclusion of HY-2A data, but which can be eliminated by adopting different coordinates of the onboard DORIS antenna phase center.