RINEX Compression/Decompression Software

RINEX naming conventions

RINEX observation and navigation files are often compressed using gzip (extension .gz) or unix compress (extension .Z). The observation files are also often double compressed: first the ASCII observation files are compressed using the so-called Hatanaka compression, followed by gzip or unix compress. Compressed RINEX files are recognisable by their file extensions. These are different for RINEX version 3 and version 2 files.

The following file naming conventions are used for RINEX version 3 (and the upcoming version 4) files:

<STA4><MM><CCC>_[R|S]_<yyyy><doy><hh><mm>_<dd>[D|H|M]_<dd>S_MO.[rnx|crx][|.gz]
RINEX version 3 or 4 observation file with optional Hatanaka (.crx) and/or gzip compression (.gz)
<STA4><MM><CCC>_[R|S]_<yyyy><doy><hh><mm>_<dd>[D|H|M]_MN.rnx[|.gz]
RINEX version 3 or 4 navigation file with optional gzip compression (.gz)
RINEX version 3 and 4 filenames are always in uppercase, except for the .rnx, .crx and .gz file extensions. The first part if the filename is a 9 character station identifier, consisting of a 4-letter station name <STA4>, a two digit code for the monument and receiver <MM> and the country code <CCC>. The second part is a flag to indicate of the file is generated by the receiver (R) or from a data stream (S). The third part gives the year, day of year, hour and minute of the start of the file, whereas the fourth part indicated the duration of the file given in days <dd>D, hours <dd>H or minutes <dd>M. Observation filenames have a fifth field to indicate the sample rate in seconds <dd>S. The extension for uncompressed files is .rnx, if Hatanaka compression is used on observation files the extension is changed to .crx. When the file is compressed by gzip a .gz file extension is added

For RINEX version 2 the following conventions are used:

<sta4><doy><s>[|<mm>].<yy>d.[Z|gz]
Hatanaka and UNIX or gzip compressed RINEX observation file
<sta4><doy><s>[|<mm>].<yy>o.[Z|gz]
Unix or gzip compressed RINEX observation file
<sta4><doy><s>[|<mm>].<yy>[n|g].[Z|gz]
Unix or gzip compressed RINEX navigation files
<sta4><doy><s>[|<mm>].<yy>[o|n|g]
uncompressed RINEX observation and navigation files
with <yy> the last two digits of the year, <s> a single digit or letter for the session id (s=0 for daily files, s=a...x for hourly files) and <mm> the optional minutes (mm=[00|15|30|45]) for highrate files. For the rinex version 2 files uppercase or lowercase are both possible. For this website we always use lowercase letters for the rinex version 2 files, except for the .Z extension.

Hatanaka compression and decompression software

Yuki Hatanaka (GSI) wrote and maintains rnx2crx and crx2rnx compression and decompression software. Linux, Windows, Mac and several other systems are supported. The software and can be obtained from the RNX2CRX download page http://terras.gsi.go.jp/ja/crx2rnx.html.

Yuki Hatanaka also provides two scripts for rnx2crz and crz2rnx that include the gzip or unix compression/decompression steps. To decompress the files downloaded from this website you can use the following command

   crz2rnx compressed-rinexfile(s)
Each compressed rinex file in the argument list (wildcards permitted) will be uncompressed using Hatanaka decompression (if applicable) and gzip or unix decompress. Examples how to use crz2rnx are
   crz2rnx DLF100NLD_R_20213550000_01D_30S_MO.crx.gz
   crz2rnx ????00NLD_R_20213550000_01D_30S_MO.crx.gz
   crz2rnx BRDC00NLD_R_20213550000_01D_MO.rnx.gz
   crz2rnx wsrt3100.10?.Z kosg*.92?.Z
   crz2rnx -h
It is assumed that crz2rnx, crx2rnx and gzip are in your search part. For more information see the README files in the various packages.

Hatanaka decompression in Python and Matlab

This page will be updated with information on Python and Matlab code to decompress RINEX files.

Legacy tools

A unsupported graphical user interface using an older version of crx2rnx is available from here, together with alternative command line scripts.

For more information or questions contact Hans van der Marel.