Bernese GPS Software Version 5.0 - Bernese GNSS Software

19. Bernese Processing Engine (BPE)
19.1 Introduction
In the last few years more and more permanent networks have been established in many
different regions of the world. The amount of data collected by such networks day by day
calls for a highly automated GPS data processing. Large campaigns are also being organized
with a few tens to a few hundreds of sites occupied. For this type of tasks the Bernese
Processing Engine (BPE) has been developed to allow for a very automated GPS data
processing. The first version of the Bernese Processing Engine has been provided with the
Bernese GPS Software Version 4.0. The tool has been primarily designed for the automation
of processing permanent GPS networks. However, experienced users use the BPE not only
for processing data stemming from permanent networks but even in many other cases when
a certain level of automation of the processing is desirable. The BPE was rated many times
as an extremely useful tool and has become a very important part of the Bernese GPS
Software. It is used at the CODE Analysis Center of the IGS for the routine processing of
the global IGS network since 1995. The BPE was also implemented at GSI (Geographical
Survey Institute) in Japan to process the nation-wide Japanese network consisting of 1’200
receivers on a daily basis.
Based on the experience made with the first version of the BPE, in 2002 we decided to
develop a new BPE using modern tools and design. This allowed to significantly simplify
the architecture of the BPE and to solve problems that occasionally were observed on
Windows platforms due to the amount of resources required by the old BPE.
This new development results in the following features:
• Server-client architecture, communication between the server and the clients is based
on TCP/IP.
• The server is written in C++ and integrated into the menu program.
• The client is written in Perl and can be used under diverse operating systems (Windows
and various UNIX systems).
• On UNIX platforms the so-called user scripts may be written in (almost) any programming
language. We use (and recommend to use) Perl, however, old UNIX-shell scripts
work, too. On Windows platforms the use of DOS batch files is no longer supported
and scripts have to be written in Perl.
• The new BPE is highly backwards-compatible. Old process-control files (see below)
may be used without any changes. Old (shell) user scripts on UNIX platforms require
a minimal amount of changes (see Section 24.3 for details).
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