Proposal for a Binary Receiver Independent Exchange Format

Kees de Jong and Hans van der Marel
Delft University of Technology,
Department of Geodesy
Thijsseweg 11,
2629 JA Delft,
The Netherlands


The introduction of the Receiver Independent Exchange Format (RINEX)
in 1989 was an important milestone. In its present form, using Hatanaka
and standard Unix compression tools, it is quite an efficient format
to store GPS data on a daily, or even hourly basis.

However, both existing and new applications of GPS have a tendency to 
go to real-time operation and use higher sample rates. In order to 
support these applications there is a need for a binary receiver independent
exchange format. This format should meet the following requirements:
- receiver independent
- small and compact data format (must be able to handle 1 second data)
- no predefined boundaries 
- upward and downward compatible
- flexible
In this poster we propose a format, NCBI (New Compressed Binary) that
meets these requirements. All records are self supporting. They include a 
record length and time tag. Thereby, the data can be send as a continuous 
stream, or in bins of various sizes, and archived in files of various sizes. 

Test software, which is freely available from DUT, has been developed to
generate NCBI files from RINEX and vice versa. This software runs on both
big- and little-endian systems.