1238 Pomegranate Lane, Golden, CO 80401

Tel 303-526-4100 Fax 303-526-3831

USING CORS STATIONS WITH TRIMBLE GEOMATICS OFFICE (TGO)

(FOR EASE OF USE, CREATE THE PROJECT IN TGO BEFORE DOWNLOADING THIS WILL
CREATE A CHECKIN DIRECTORY WHICH IS WHERE YOU WANT TO SEND THE CORS DATA,
BOTH GPS DATA FILES AND NGS COORDINATE SHEETS TGO ALWAYS LOOKS IN THE
CHECKIN DIRECTORY FIRST WHEN IMPORTING FILES INTO THE DATABASE.)
To use the CORS stations for horizontal control, execute the following steps:
1. Log on to the NGS CORS web site (www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/cors-data.html),
select the Maps options to review and identify the station appropriate for
your use. (NOTE: In most cases the CORS stations are significantly distant
from your local site to compensate for the longer distances you should
extend your local observation times by at least 1 minute for each kilometer in
distance).
2. After determining the appropriate stations, select the DOWNLOAD option.
This will bring up selection that allows either the STANDARD or
CUSTOMIZED method. Under the STANDARD option you can download
hourly files or usually the entire 24 hour file. The CUSTOMIZED option is
preferable as you can span over several hours or even days but is not
available until the day following the observations the Standard download is
usually available with an hour of the closing time frame.
STANDARD DOWNLOAD this option displays a dialog box listing the
available Sites (alphabetical by state), the Option or data type you
required, and the date (BE AWARE THAT THE DATES LISTED ARE
GREENWICH, NOT LOCAL). In addition to the GPS data download as
described below, this section also allows a history of the availability of
a particular station select the Site and Data Availability to view the
reliablility of a CORS site over time.
To download the GPS data, select the Site, the RINEX2 data selection,
and the date (the NGS web page holds the CORS data for 30 days, any
older data can be obtained by request from the NGS as per the web page
instructions). Once you have selected the station and time, select Find
Files and the screen will display at least two files for the specified date,
one with an O extension (this is the raw data), and one with an N
extension (this is the ephemeris for the particular data set). You need to
download both of these files. NOTE that some CORS stations log hourly
(Greenwich time) files, in those cases the observation files will have
alphabetical extensions for each hour (a = midnight to 1 am, b = 1 am to
2 am, etc., the file with the 0 (zero) is the 24 hour file).
For example, the 1 hour files for the Table Mountain CORS site in Colorado
for 1:00pm to 2:pm MST on May 13, 2022 would have the following

name: tmgo133u.02* [tmgo (station identifier)+133 (Julian Day)+u (1pm

MDT plus seven hours offset to Greenwich Mean Time equals 20 which
equates alphabetically to u).02 (the year)+o (the observation or GPS
data) or n (the navigation or ephemeris data).
IF YOU CANNOT FIND THE EPHEMERIS (*.0?N) FILE, YOU NEED TO GO TO
THE DATA TYPE (OPTION) SCREEN AND SELECT GLOBAL NAVIGATION
THIS WILL ACCESS AN EPHEMERIS FILE THAT IS VALID FOR ALL CORS
STATIONS IN THAT PARTICULAR TIME FRAME. THE GLOBAL FILE FOR MAY
13, 2002 WOULD HAVE THE NAME BRDC1330.02N.
CUSTOMIZED DOWNLOAD this option asks for the local time, start time,
and how many hours of data are required. After selecting these items,
select CONTINUE and another screen will be displayed offering a
selection of CORS stations listed alphabetical by the four character
station name as displayed on the map. Select SUBMIT and the server
will compile a ZIP file for download that contains all the information
necessary for processing (the O and N files described above, plus the
data sheets (*.ds) and the Precise Ephemeris in SP3 format).
3. After downloading the above data and ephemeris files (using the Standard
Download), select the Coordinates option in the data section. This will bring
up a data sheet with the station coordinates AND the antenna type -the
antenna type is critical as the software can model the antenna offsets ONLY if
the model and type is known. Furthermore, bear in mind that most of the
CORS station antennas are surveyed in place so they do not have the normal
antenna height the antenna height should be zero with a True Vertical,
Antenna Phase Center, or Antenna Reference Point (ARP) designation (be
sure to use the ARP position of the station). Note the PID number for the
station (there are at least two PIDs for each CORS station, be sure to retrieve
the ARP or monument itself) and go to the NGS data sheet page
(http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/datasheet.html) and retrieve the data sheet using
the PID option. As above, save the data sheet to the CHECKIN directory of
your current project.
4. Once the data (the observation and ephemeris files) have been downloaded,
you will have to decompress them for use. These files have been compressed
using a UNIX compression algorithm (GZIP). If you have the WinZip utility, it
can handle the UNIX format, if not you will also need to download the GZIP
utility (also available on the NGS CORS station web page.
5. After executing the above steps, go to IMPORT to bring in the data sheets
(using the NGS data sheet file option). At this point, edit the station names
to suit, note that the symbol for the station will reflect the point quality most
CORS stations will have at least a small triangle to indicate high order
horizontal control. Once the data sheets have been imported, import the
CORS data itself using the RINEX option. During this process, be sure to edit
the point names associated with the CORS GPS data to be EXACTLY THE SAME
as the points imported from the data sheets. From this point forward, treat
the CORS data as you would your own Trimble *.dat files for processing and
adjustment.