What is the relation of the EPN to the global IGS network ?
The International GNSS Service (IGS) is a voluntary federation of worldwide agencies that pool resources and permanent GNSS station data to generate precise GNSS products. In general, you can think of the IGS as the highest-precision international civilian GNSS community (source: IGS CB). The EPN is a dense regional network GNSS network that operates following IGS standards. In addition, the IGS considers the EPN as a related network and IGS works closely with the agencies operating the EPN. Typically, the IGS designates a subset of the regional EPN stations as IGS stations. The choice of which stations should also be IGS stations is motivated by their benefit to the IGS products, according to location and instrumentation. Next to this, the EPN uses IGS products (such as the IGS precise satellite orbits for the generation of the EPN products).
