CALL FOR PAPERS

Sessions 10: "System Calibration Techniques and On-Site Quality Control"

Author: John Luck and Yang Fumin
Subject: Call for papers for 16th International Workshop on Laser Ranging
Sessions 10: "System Calibration Techniques and On-Site Quality Control" 

Nominal Session Time: Wednesday 15 October, 16:30 - 18:00

We invite you to share your thoughts, experiences and plans about System Calibration Techniques and On-Site Quality Control during Session 10 in Poznan. Topics we would like to hear about include - but are not restricted to -:

  1. System calibration, or measuring the system delays in near-real-time, which is the cornerstone by which system accuracy is ensured.
  2. Confirmation that the standard against which calibrations are performed, e.g. the ground target range, is always extremely well known. How are these calibrations and verifications done, especially with respect to multi-target or multi-colour calibrations, internal calibrations, timing system calibrations, repeated ground surveys, and novel or intriguing techniques?
  3. With the advent of time transfer and transponder ranging, the need to separate the transmit-side and receive-side components of system delay has arisen, equivalent to measuring the exact UTC instants of pulse passages past the System Reference Point. It is of interest how this is accomplished.
  4. The Analysis Centres provide valuable quality control services by feeding back range and time biases and precision estimates to the stations on a daily or weekly basis. Nevertheless, it is better if much of this burden is undertaken by On-Site Quality Control at the stations, or groups of stations. This topic includes performance assessment of all system components including software, and methodologies for detecting, identifying and fixing errors (including unknown system biases) and for improving station performance.
  5. Contributions on local tie surveys and the possibility of routine height variation monitoring will also be most welcome.
  6. Whatever else you think may be relevant to this session.

We hope that there will be plenty of discussion and sharing of ideas. Summaries of what has been done and reported in the past are also acceptable. Accordingly, we invite short oral presentations as well as full-length (10-12 minute) presentations, and posters with brief oral introductions.

Please Email your ABSTRACTS by 10 September 2008 to both co-chairs:
Yang Fumin: yangfm@shao.ac.cn
John Luck: john-luck@bigpond.com

For more information, see:
http://www.astro.amu.edu.pl/ILRS_Workshop_2008/index.php

We look forward to seeing you in Poznan.