Satellite Emission Range Inferred Earth Survey (SERIES) project

The Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed by the Department of Defense primarily for navigation use by the United States Armed Forces. The system will consist of a constellation of 18 operational Navigation Satellite Timing and Ranging (NAVSTAR) satellites by the late 1980's. During the last four years, the Satellite Emission Range Inferred Earth Surveying (SERIES) team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has developed a novel receiver which is the heart of the SERIES geodetic system designed to use signals broadcast from the GPS. This receiver does not require knowledge of the exact code sequence being transmitted. In addition, when two SERIES receivers are used differentially to determine a baseline, few cm accuracies can be obtained. The initial engineering test phase has been completed for the SERIES Project. Baseline lengths, ranging from 150 meters to 171 kilometers, have been measured with 0.3 cm to 7 cm accuracies. This technology, which is sponsored by the NASA Geodynamics Program, has been developed at JPL to meet the challenge for high precision, cost-effective geodesy, and to complement the mobile Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) system for Earth surveying

Advanced Tracking Loop Architectures for Multi-frequency GNSS Receiver

The multi-frequency Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are designed to overcome the inherent performance limitations of single-frequency receivers. However, the processing of multiple frequency signals in a time-varying GNSS signal environment which are potentially affected by multipath, ionosphere scintillation, blockage, and interference is quite challenging, as each signal is influenced differently by channel effects according to its Radio Frequency (RF). In order to get benefit of synchronously/coherently generated multiple frequency signals, advanced receiver signal processing techniques need to be developed.The aim of this research thesis is to extract the best performance benefits out of multifrequency GNSS signals in a time-varying GNSS signal environment. To accomplish this objective, it is necessary to analyze the multi-frequency signal characteristics and to investigate suitable signal processing algorithms in order to enable the best performance of each signal. The GNSS receiver position accuracy and reliability are majorly determined by the signal tracking-loop performance, hence, the primary focus of this thesis is on improving the tracking-loop performance of coherently generated multi-frequency signals.In the first phase of this research, the performance of multi-frequency GNSS signals is analyzed using conventional signal processing algorithms. Furthermore, the performance of a combination of multi-frequency signals is evaluated in order to find the optimum two-frequency signal combination for standalone and differential positioning applications. The limitations of the conventional multi-frequency signal processing algorithms are identified and an optimum dual-frequency signal processing architecture is proposed for robust and precise positioning applications.By making use of the inherent linear relation between the Line-of-Sight (LOS) Doppler shifts of multi-frequency GNSS signals, a computationally efficient Centralized Dynamics Tracking Loop (CTL) architecture is also proposed. In the CTL architecture, the common geometric Doppler shift in the received multi-frequency signals is estimated using a higher-order wide-band filter by making use of multiple frequency channel measurements in a coordinated manner. Additionally, the residual-phase variations specific to each frequency channel are tracked using Phase Lock Loop (PLL) with a narrow bandwidth filter. The CTL filter provides the geometric Doppler shift aid to individual frequency channels. The common Doppler-aided narrow-band signal tracking enhances the signal tracking sensitivity and robustness to the in-band interference in each frequency channel. This further reduces the noise in the linear combination of pseudorange observations.In real GNSS signal environment, multiple frequency signals are often subjected to intentional or unintentional RF interference either at the same time or at different time instants. Moreover, each of these signals is influenced differently by RF interference. To track signals in such time-varying signal conditions, the CTL using an Adaptive Kalman Filter (AKF) is proposed to enable an adaptive tracking loop bandwidth in response to received signal power level and signal dynamics. The central task of the AKF is to effectively blend multiple frequency carrier-phase observations to estimate the common geometric Doppler frequency of received multiple frequency signals. A suitable collaboration in multi-frequency channel tracking using centralized dynamics tracking loop enables a robust carrier tracking even if some of the frequency channels are affected by ionospheric scintillation, multipath, or interference.The performance of the proposed multi-frequency GNSS signal processing algorithms is demonstrated using analytical methods and experimental results based on live satellite data collected over GPS L1, L2C, and L5 signal frequencies. The dual-frequency signal processing architecture proposed in this research thesis has reduced the position error by 50%. The centralized dynamics multi-frequency carrier tracking loop has enhanced the individual channel tracking loop threshold by 7 dB in challenging signal conditions

Radio Frequency Interference Impact Assessment on Global Navigation Satellite Systems

The Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen of the EC Joint Research Centre (IPSC-JRC) has been mandated to perform a study on the Radio Frequency (RF) threat against telecommunications and ICT control systems. This study is divided into two parts. The rst part concerns the assessment of high energy radio frequency (HERF) threats, where the focus is on the generation of electromagnetic pulses (EMP), the development of corresponding devices and the possible impact on ICT and power distribution systems. The second part of the study concerns radio frequency interference (RFI) with regard to global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). This document contributes to the second part and contains a detailed literature study disclosing the weaknesses of GNSS systems. Whereas the HERF analysis only concerns intentional interference issues, this study on GNSS also takes into account unintentional interference, enlarging the spectrum of plausible interference scenarios.JRC.DG.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Adaptive Interference Mitigation in GPS Receivers

Satellite navigation systems (GNSS) are among the most complex radio-navigation systems, providing positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information. A growing number of public sector and commercial applications rely on the GNSS PNT service to support business growth, technical development, and the day-to-day operation of technology and socioeconomic systems. As GNSS signals have inherent limitations, they are highly vulnerable to intentional and unintentional interference. GNSS signals have spectral power densities far below ambient thermal noise. Consequently, GNSS receivers must meet high standards of reliability and integrity to be used within a broad spectrum of applications. GNSS receivers must employ effective interference mitigation techniques to ensure robust, accurate, and reliable PNT service. This research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the Adaptive Notch Filter (ANF), a precorrelation mitigation technique that can be used to excise Continuous Wave Interference (CWI), hop-frequency and chirp-type interferences from GPS L1 signals. To mitigate unwanted interference, state-of-the-art ANFs typically adjust a single parameter, the notch centre frequency, and zeros are constrained extremely close to unity. Because of this, the notch centre frequency converges slowly to the target frequency. During this slow converge period, interference leaks into the acquisition block, thus sabotaging the operation of the acquisition block. Furthermore, if the CWI continuously hops within the GPS L1 in-band region, the subsequent interference frequency is locked onto after a delay, which means constant interference occurs in the receiver throughout the delay period. This research contributes to the field of interference mitigation at GNSS's receiver end using adaptive signal processing, predominately for GPS. This research can be divided into three stages. I first designed, modelled and developed a Simulink-based GPS L1 signal simulator, providing a homogenous test signal for existing and proposed interference mitigation algorithms. Simulink-based GPS L1 signal simulator provided great flexibility to change various parameters to generate GPS L1 signal under different conditions, e.g. Doppler Shift, code phase delay and amount of propagation degradation. Furthermore, I modelled three acquisition schemes for GPS signals and tested GPS L1 signals acquisition via coherent and non-coherent integration methods. As a next step, I modelled different types of interference signals precisely and implemented and evaluated existing adaptive notch filters in MATLAB in terms of Carrier to Noise Density (\u1d436/\u1d4410), Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Peak Degradation Metric, and Mean Square Error (MSE) at the output of the acquisition module in order to create benchmarks. Finally, I designed, developed and implemented a novel algorithm that simultaneously adapts both coefficients in lattice-based ANF. Mathematically, I derived the full-gradient term for the notch's bandwidth parameter adaptation and developed a framework for simultaneously adapting both coefficients of a lattice-based adaptive notch filter. I evaluated the performance of existing and proposed interference mitigation techniques under different types of interference signals. Moreover, I critically analysed different internal signals within the ANF structure in order to develop a new threshold parameter that resets the notch bandwidth at the start of each subsequent interference frequency. As a result, I further reduce the complexity of the structural implementation of lattice-based ANF, allowing for efficient hardware realisation and lower computational costs. It is concluded from extensive simulation results that the proposed fully adaptive lattice-based provides better interference mitigation performance and superior convergence properties to target frequency compared to traditional ANF algorithms. It is demonstrated that by employing the proposed algorithm, a receiver is able to operate with a higher dynamic range of JNR than is possible with existing methods. This research also presents the design and MATLAB implementation of a parameterisable Complex Adaptive Notch Filer (CANF). Present analysis on higher order CANF for detecting and mitigating various types of interference for complex baseband GPS L1 signals. In the end, further research was conducted to suppress interference in the GPS L1 signal by exploiting autocorrelation properties and discarding some portion of the main lobe of the GPS L1 signal. It is shown that by removing 30% spectrum of the main lobe, either from left, right, or centre, the GPS L1 signal is still acquirable

The Global Navigation System Scope (GNSScope): a toolbox for the end-to-end modelling simulation and analysis of GNSS

The thesis provides a detailed overview of the work carried out by the author over the course of the research for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Westminster, and the performance results of the novel techniques introduced into the literature. The outcome of the work is collectively referred to as the Global Navigation System Scope (GNSScope) Toolbox, offering a complete, fully reconfigurable platform for the end-to-end modeling, simulation and analysis of satellite navigation signals and systems, covering the signal acquisition, tracking, and range processing operations that take place in a generic Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, accompanied by a Graphical User Interface (GUI) providing access to all the techniques available in the toolbox. Designed and implemented entirely in the MATLAB mathematical programming environment using Software Defined Radio (SDR) receiver techniques, the toolbox offers a novel new acquisition algorithm capable of handling all Phase-Shift Keying (PSK) type modulations used on all frequency bands in currently available satellite navigation signals, including all sub-classes of the Binary Offset Carrier (BOC) modulated signals. In order to be able to process all these signals identified by the acquisition search, a novel tracking algorithm was also designed and implemented into the toolbox to track and decode all acquired satellite signals, including those currently intended to be used in future navigation systems, such as the Galileo test signals transmitted by the GIOVE satellites orbiting the Earth. In addition to the developed receiver toolbox, three novel algorithms were also designed to handle weak signals, multipath, and multiple access interference in GNSScope. The Mirrored Channel Mitigation Technique, based on the successive and parallel interference cancellation techniques, reduces the hardware complexity of the interference mitigation process by utilizing the local code and carrier replicas generated in the tracking channels, resulting in a reduction in hardware resources proportional to the number of received strong signals. The Trigonometric Interference Cancellation Technique, used in cross-correlation interference mitigation, exploits the underlying mathematical expressions to simplify the interference removal process, resulting in reduced complexity and execution times by reducing the number of operations by 25% per tracking channel. The Split Chip Summation Technique, based on the binary valued signal modulation compression technique, enhances the amount of information captured from compressing the signal to reveal specific filtering effects on the positive and negative polarity chips of the spreading code. Simulation case studies generated entirely using the GNSScope toolbox will be used throughout the thesis to demonstrate the effectiveness of the novel techniques developed over the course of the research, and the results will be compared to those obtained from other techniques reported in the literature

Enhanced receiver architectures for processing multi GNSS signals in a single chain : based on partial differential equations mathematical model

The focus of our research is on designing a new architecture (RF front-end and digital) for processing multi GNSS signals in a single receiver chain. The motivation is to save in overhead cost (size, processing time and power consumption) of implementing multiple signal receivers side-by-side on-board Smartphones. This thesis documents the new multi-signal receiver architecture that we have designed. Based on this architecture, we have achieved/published eight novel contributions. Six of these implementations focus on multi GNSS signal receivers, and the last two are for multiplexing Bluetooth and GPS received signals in a single processing chain. We believe our work in terms of the new innovative and novel techniques achieved is a major contribution to the commercial world especially that of Smartphones. Savings in both silicon size and processing time will be highly beneficial to reduction of costs but more importantly for conserving the energy of the battery. We are proud that we have made this significant contribution to both industry and the scientific research and development arena. The first part of the work focus on the Two GNSS signal detection front-end approaches that were designed to explore the availability of the L1 band of GPS, Galileo and GLONASS at an early stage. This is so that the receiver devotes appropriate resources to acquire them. The first approach was based on folding the carrier frequency of all the three GNSS signals with their harmonics to the First Nyquist Zone (FNZ), as depicted by the BandPass Sampling Receiver technique (BPSR). Consequently, there is a unique power distribution of these folded signals based on the actual present signals that can be detected to alert the digital processing parts to acquire it. Volterra Series model is used to estimate the existing power in the FNZ by extracting the kernels of these folded GNSS signals, if available. The second approach filters out the right-side lobe of the GLONASS signal and the left-side lobe of the Galileo signal, prior to the folding process in our BPSR implementation. This filtering is important to enable none overlapped folding of these two signals with the GPS signal in the FNZ. The simulation results show that adopting these two approaches can save much valuable acquisition processing time. Our Orthogonal BandPass Sampling Receiver and Orthogonal Complex BandPass Sampling Receiver are two methods designed to capture any two wireless signals simultaneously and use a single channel in the digital domain to process them, including tracking and decoding, concurrently. The novelty of the two receivers is centred on the Orthogonal Integrated Function (OIF) that continuously harmonies the two received signals to form a single orthogonal signal allowing the “tracking and decoding” to be carried out by a single digital channel. These receivers employ a Hilbert Transform for shifting one of the input signals by 90-degrees. Then, the BPSR technique is used to fold back the two received signals to the same reference frequency in the FNZ. Results show that these designed methods also reduce the sampling frequency to a rate proportional to the maximum bandwidth, instead of the summation of bandwidths, of the input signals. Two combined GPS L1CA and L2C signal acquisition channels are designed based on applying the idea of the OIF to enhance the power consumption and the implementation complexity in the existing combination methods and also to enhance the acquisition sensitivity. This is achieved by removing the Doppler frequency of the two signals; our methods add the in-phase component of the L2C signal together with the in-phase component of the L1CA signal, which is then shifted by 90-degree before adding it to the remaining components of these two signals, resulting in an orthogonal form of the combined signals. This orthogonal signal is then fed to our developed version of the parallel-code-phase-search engine. Our simulation results illustrate that the acquisition sensitivity of these signals is improved successfully by 5.0 dB, which is necessary for acquiring weak signals in harsh environments. The last part of this work focuses on the tracking stage when specifically multiplexing Bluetooth and L1CA GPS signals in a single channel based on using the concept of the OIF, where the tracking channel can be shared between the two signals without losing the lock or degrading its performance. Two approaches are designed for integrating the two signals based on the mathematical analysis of the main function of the tracking channel, which the Phase-Locked Loop (PLL). A mathematical model of a set of differential equations has been developed to evaluate the PLL when it used to track and demodulated two signals simultaneously. The simulation results proved that the implementation of our approaches has reduced by almost half the size and processing time

CASES: A Smart, Compact GPS Software Receiver for Space Weather Monitoring

A real-time software-defined GPS receiver for the L1 C/A and L2C codes has been developed as a low-cost space weather instrument for monitoring ionospheric scintillation and total electron content. The so-called CASES receiver implements several novel processing techniques not previously published that make it well suited for space weather monitoring: (A) a differencing technique for eliminating local clock effects, (B) an advanced triggering mechanism for determining the onset of scintillation, (C) data buffering to permit observation of the prelude to scintillation, and (D) data-bit prediction and wipe-off for robust tracking. The receiver has been tested in a variety of benign and adverse signal conditions (e.g., severe ionospheric scintillation, both real and simulated); the results are presented here. The custom hardware platform on which the software runs is compact while remaining flexible and extensible. The CASES platform consists of a digital signal processor, an ARM microcontroller, and a custom-built narrow-band dualfrequency front end. Because the receiver is softwaredefined, it can be remotely reprogrammed via the internet or another communications link.Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanic

Performance Evaluation of Block Acquisition and Tracking Algorithms Using an Open Source GPS Receiver Platform

Location technologies have many applications in wireless communications, military and space missions, etc. US Global Positioning System (GPS) and other existing and emerging Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are expected to provide accurate location information to enable such applications. While GNSS systems perform very well in strong signal conditions, their operation in many urban, indoor, and space applications is not robust or even impossible due to weak signals and strong distortions. The search for less costly, faster and more sensitive receivers is still in progress. As the research community addresses more and more complicated phenomena there exists a demand on flexible multimode reference receivers, associated SDKs, and development platforms which may accelerate and facilitate the research. One of such concepts is the software GPS/GNSS receiver (GPS SDR) which permits a facilitated access to algorithmic libraries and a possibility to integrate more advanced algorithms without hardware and essential software updates. The GNU-SDR and GPS-SDR open source receiver platforms are such popular examples. This paper evaluates the performance of recently proposed block-corelator techniques for acquisition and tracking of GPS signals using open source GPS-SDR platform

Improving Reliability and Assessing Performance of Global Navigation Satellite System Precise Point Positioning Ambiguity Resolution

Conventional Precise Point Positioning (PPP) has always required a relatively long initialization period (few tens of minutes at least) for the carrier-phase ambiguities to converge to constant values and for the solution to reach its optimal precision. The classical PPP convergence period is primarily caused by the estimation of the carrier-phase ambiguity from the relatively noisy pseudoranges and the estimation of atmospheric delay. If the underlying integer nature of the ambiguity is known, it can be resolved, thereby reducing the convergence time of conventional PPP. To recover the underlying integer nature of the carrier-phase ambiguities, different strategies for mitigating the satellite and receiver dependent equipment delays have been developed, and products made publicly available to enable ambiguity resolution without any baseline restrictions. There has been limited research within the scope of interoperability of the products, combining the products to improve reliability and assessment of ambiguity resolution within the scope of being an integrity indicator. This study seeks to develop strategies to enable each of these and examine their feasibility. The advantage of interoperability of the different PPP ambiguity resolution (PPP-AR) products would be to permit the PPP user to transform independently generated PPP-AR products to obtain multiple fixed solutions of comparable precision and accuracy. The ability to provide multiple solutions would increase the reliability of the solution for, e.g., real-time processing: if there were an outage in the generation of the PPP-AR products, the user could instantly switch streams to a different provider. The satellite clock combinations routinely produced within the International GNSS Service (IGS) currently disregard that analysis centers (ACs) provide products which enable ambiguity resolution. Users have been expected to choose either an IGS product which is a combined product from multiple ACs or select an individual AC solution which provides products that enable PPP-AR. The goal of the novel research presented was to develop and test a robust satellite clock combination preserving the integer nature of the carrier-phase ambiguities at the user end. mm-level differences were noted, which was expected as the strength lies mainly in its reliability and stable median performance and the combined product is better than or equivalent to any single ACs product in the combination process. As have been shown in relative positioning and PPP-AR, ambiguity resolution is critical for enabling cm-level positioning. However, what if specifications where at the few dm-level, such as 10 cm and 20 cm horizontal what role does ambiguity resolution play? The role of ambiguity resolution relies primarily on what are the user specifications. If the user specifications are at the few cm-level, ambiguity resolution is an asset as it improves convergence and solution stability. Whereas, if the users specification is at the few dm-level, ambiguity resolution offers limited improvement over the float solution. If the user has the resources to perform ambiguity resolution, even when the specifications are at the few dm-level, it should be utilized

GNSS Vulnerabilities and Existing Solutions:A Review of the Literature

This literature review paper focuses on existing vulnerabilities associated with global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs). With respect to the civilian/non encrypted GNSSs, they are employed for proving positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions across a wide range of industries. Some of these include electric power grids, stock exchange systems, cellular communications, agriculture, unmanned aerial systems and intelligent transportation systems. In this survey paper, physical degradations, existing threats and solutions adopted in academia and industry are presented. In regards to GNSS threats, jamming and spoofing attacks as well as detection techniques adopted in the literature are surveyed and summarized. Also discussed are multipath propagation in GNSS and non line-of-sight (NLoS) detection techniques. The review also identifies and discusses open research areas and techniques which can be investigated for the purpose of enhancing the robustness of GNSS