Evaluation of Best Satellite-Receiver Geometry for Improved IRNSS/GPS Position Accuracy

A GPS-IRNSS combined navigation system is emerging in India. It is possible to increase the accuracy of the receiver or user's position at any time and under any weather conditions with a combined system. It is possible to use these navigation systems for finding the precise location of receivers in civil aviation, precision applications such as surveying, disaster management, and other applications. Usually, satellite navigation systems are based on a geometric relationship between satellite and receiver, with errors caused by atmospheric conditions, multipath, and other factors affecting accuracy. Geometry of satellite receivers is measured by the Dilution of Precision (DOP), a unit less quantity. This paper investigates the possibility possible to obtain better accuracy by combining GPS and IRNSS constellations. This improved accuracy is typically useful for precision applications such as surveying and disaster management

Designing a Universal GNSS Simulator for Pseudorange Calculation

The development of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers, especially mass market receivers, has to face cost constraints. To reduce the time to market, and thus the costs, the usage of a GNSS signal simulation facility is one possibility. GNSS signal simulators provide an effective tool for simulating the behavior of satellite-based navigation systems. The challenge is that they have to be model the real world as close as possible, taking satellite orbits, atmospheric effects, satellite clock errors, multipath effects, etc. into account. Thus these simulators achieve lower hardware complexity and precise position determination even when proper signal from satellites is absent. The aim is to design a simulator which can simulate the satellite signals while keeping the all the errors as low as possible while keeping the G.D.O.P. in the range of 4 to 5. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15017

On-board multispectral classification study. Volume 2: Supplementary tasks

The operational tasks of the onboard multispectral classification study were defined. These tasks include: sensing characteristics for future space applications; information adaptive systems architectural approaches; data set selection criteria; and onboard functional requirements for interfacing with global positioning satellites

Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems in Civil Applications

Interest in drones has been exponentially growing in the last ten years and these machines are often presented as the optimal solution in a huge number of civil applications (monitoring, agriculture, emergency management etc). However the promises still do not match the data coming from the consumer market, suggesting that the only big field in which the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles is actually profitable is the video-makers’ one. This may be explained partly with the strong limits imposed by existing (and often "obsolete") national regulations, but also - and pheraps mainly - with the lack of real autonomy. The vast majority of vehicles on the market nowadays are infact autonomous only in the sense that they are able to follow a pre-determined list of latitude-longitude-altitude coordinates. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that complete autonomy for UAVs can be achieved only with a performing control, reliable and flexible planning platforms and strong perception capabilities; these topics are introduced and discussed by presenting the results of the main research activities performed by the candidate in the last three years which have resulted in 1) the design, integration and control of a test bed for validating and benchmarking visual-based algorithm for space applications; 2) the implementation of a cloud-based platform for multi-agent mission planning; 3) the on-board use of a multi-sensor fusion framework based on an Extended Kalman Filter architecture

Debating Space Security: Capabilities and Vulnerabilities

The U.S. position in the debate on space security has been that (1) space-based systems could be developed and used to obtain decisive warghting superiority over an adversary, and (2) these space-based systems, because they might give such an inordinate advantage over any adversary, will be attacked. The Russians and Chinese, in contrast, claim to be threatened by U.S. aspirations in space but deny that they pose a serious threat to U.S. space-based systems. They view the development of advanced military space systems by the United States as evidence of a growing gap of military capabilities limited only by technological--not political--constraints. They argue that U.S. missile defense systems operating in coordination with advanced satellite sensors would weaken their nuclear retaliatory potential. This dissertation argues that the positions held by both of these parties are more extreme than warranted. An analytical evaluation quickly narrows the touted capabilities and assumed vulnerabilities of space systems to a much smaller set of concerns that can be addressed by collaboration. Chapter 2: Operationally Responsive Space (ORS): Is 24/7 Warghter Support Feasible? demonstrates the infeasibility of dramatically increasing U.S. warfighting superiority by using satellites. Chapter 3: What Can be Achieved by Attacking Satellites? makes the case that although U.S. armed forces rely extensively on its satellite infrastructure, that does not immediately make them desirable targets. The functions performed by military satellites are diffused among large constellations with redundancies. Also, some of the functions performed by these satellites can be substituted for by other terrestrial and aerial systems. Chapter 4: The Limits of Chinese Anti-Satellite Missiles demonstrates that anti-satellite (ASAT) intercepts are very complex under realistic conditions and that a potential adversary with space capabilities comparable to China's has very limited capability to use ASATs in a real-world battle scenario. Finally, in order to evaluate the chief concern raised by the Russians and Chinese, chapter 5: Satellites, Missile Defense and Space Security simulates a boost-phase missile defense system cued by the advanced Space Tracking and Surveillance (STSS) sensors. It demonstrates that even under best case assumptions, the STSS sensors are not good enough for the boost-phase missile defense system to successfully intercept and destroy an ICBM. Together, these chapters aim to narrow the contentions in the debate on space security thereby fostering the international colloboration and data sharing needed to ensure safe operations in space

Flower constellation optimization and implementation

Satellite constellations provide the infrastructure to implement some of the most important global services of our times both in civilian and military applications, ranging from telecommunications to global positioning, and to observation systems. Flower Constellations constitute a set of satellite constellations characterized by periodic dynamics. They have been introduced while trying to augment the existing design methodologies for satellite constellations. The dynamics of a Flower Constellation identify a set of implicit rotating reference frames on which the satellites follow the same closed-loop relative trajectory. In particular, when one of these rotating reference frames is “Planet Centered, Planet Fixed”, then all the orbits become compatible (or resonant) with the planet; consequently, the projection of the relative path on the planet results in a repeating ground track. The satellite constellations design methodology currently most utilized is the Walker Delta Pattern or, more generally, Walker Constellations. The set of orbital planes and initial spacecraft positions are represented by a set of only three integers and two real parameters rather than by all the orbital elements; Flower Constellations provide a more general framework in which most of the former restrictions are removed, by allowing the use of resonant elliptical orbits. Flower Constellations can represent hundreds of spacecraft with a set of 6 integers and 5 real parameters only and existing constellations can be easily reproduced. How to design a Flower Constellation to satisfy specific mission requirements is an important problem for promoting the acceptance of this novel concept by the space community. Therefore one of the main goals of this work is that of proposing design techniques that can be applied to satisfy practical mission requirements. The results obtained by applying Global optimization techniques, such as Genetic Algorithms, to some relevant navigation and Earth observation space-based systems show that the Flower Constellations not only are as effective asWalker Constellations, but can also be applied to non-traditional constellation problem domains, such as regional coverage and reconnaissance

Recent Advances in Indoor Localization Systems and Technologies

Despite the enormous technical progress seen in the past few years, the maturity of indoor localization technologies has not yet reached the level of GNSS solutions. The 23 selected papers in this book present the recent advances and new developments in indoor localization systems and technologies, propose novel or improved methods with increased performance, provide insight into various aspects of quality control, and also introduce some unorthodox positioning methods

Optimization of anchor nodes placement in wireless localization networks

This work focuses on optimizing node placement for time-of-flight-based wireless localization networks. Main motivation are critical safety applications. The first part of my thesis is an experimental study on in-tunnel vehicle localization. In- tunnel localization of vehicles is crucial for emergency management, especially for large trucks transporting dangerous goods such as inflammable chemicals. Compared to open roads, evacuation in tunnels is much more difficult, so that fire or other accidents can cause much more damage. We provide distance measurement error characterization inside road tunnels focusing on time of flight measurements. We design a complete system for in-tunnel radio frequency time-of- flight-based localization and show that such a system is feasible and accurate, and that few nodes are sufficient to cover the entire tunnel. The second part of my work focuses on anchor nodes placement optimization for time-of-flight-based localization networks where multilateration is used to obtain the target position based on its distances from fixed and known anchors. Our main motivation are safety at work applications, in particular, environments such as factory halls. Our goal is to minimize the number of anchors needed to localize the target while keeping the localization uncertainty lower than a given threshold in an area of arbitrary shape with obstacles. Our propagation model accounts for the presence of line of sight between nodes, while geometric dilution of precision is used to express the localization error introduced by multilateration. We propose several integer linear programming formulations for this problem that can be used to obtain optimal solutions to instances of reasonable sizes and compare them in terms of execution times by simulation experiments. We extend our approach to address fault tolerance, ensuring that the target can still be localized after any one of the nodes fails. Two dimensional localization is sufficient for most indoor applications. However, for those industrial environments where the ceiling is very high and the worker might be climbing or be lifted from the ground, or if very high localization precision is needed, three-dimensional localization may be required. Therefore, we extend our approach to three-dimensional localization. We derive the expression for geometric dilution of precision for 3D multilateration and give its geometric interpretation. To tackle problem instances of large size, we propose two novel heuristics: greedy placement with pruning, and its improved version, greedy placement with iterative pruning. We create a simulator to test and compare all our proposed approaches by generating multiple test instances. For anchor placement for multilateration-based localization, we obtain solutions with below 2% anchors overhead with respect to the optimum on average, with around 5s average execution time for 130 candidate positions. For the fault-tolerant version of the same problem, we obtain solutions of around 1% number of anchors overhead with respect to the optimum on average, with 0.4s execution time for 65 candidate positions, by using greedy heuristic with pruning. For 3D placement, the greedy heuristic with iterative pruning produced results of 0.05% of optimum on average, with average execution time of around 6s for 250 candidate positions, for the problem instances we tested