gLAB upgrade with BeiDou navigation system signals

The gLAB tool suit is an educational and professional multipurpose GNSS data processing software. It has been developed by gAGE/UPC under a contract of the European Space Agency (ESA). The current version of gLAB allows full GPS data processing with High Accuracy Positioning capability (at the centimetre level), but only a very limited data handling of Galileo and GLONASS. The Chinese Global Satellite Navigation System Beidou was not included in the initial requirements of ESA. The target of this project is to upgrade gLAB with the necessary functions to allow this software to compute user solutions with the Beidou signals

Carrier multipath mitigation in linear combinations of Global Navigation Satellite Systems measurements

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are the main systems that provide positioning, navigation and timing at a global level. They are being used in numerous applications in different sectors including transport, military, oil & gas, agriculture as well as location based services. A significant number of these applications require centimetre-level positioning accuracy, a challenging feat due to the many error sources that affect GNSS measurements. These include errors at the satellite, propagation medium, and receiver levels. Most of these errors can be mitigated by modeling, or by exploiting their spatial and temporal correlation characteristics. However, multipath errors, which result from the combination of the direct signal with reflected signals in the vicinity of the receiver antenna, are difficult to model and therefore, difficult to mitigate. Furthermore, high accuracy positioning applications typically rely on linear combinations of measurements at different frequencies (e.g. L1 and L2 in the case of the Global Positioning System) to mitigate frequency-dependent errors such as ionospheric errors (i.e. ionosphere free combination) or otherwise facilitate position calculation (e.g. Wide Lane observable). The multipath errors associated with such combinations are significantly larger than those of individual signals. The dependency of the multipath error on the environment and its low level in single frequency measurements (i.e. up to quarter of wavelength) makes modelling and mitigating it very difficult. Current techniques attempt to mitigate multipath errors for measurements at each individual frequency, independently of the error at other frequencies, even when linear combinations of measurements are used. The literature review carried out in this thesis has drawn three main conclusions regarding carrier multipath mitigation. Firstly, existing carrier multipath mitigation techniques are inaccurate, impractical or not effective. Secondly most of the practical techniques attempt to mitigate the error by de-weighting the measurements which are most prone to the multipath error (i.e measurement at low elevation). Thirdly, existing weighting techniques are oversimplified and do not reflect the error level accurately. In this research and for the first time, carrier multipath errors have been studied directly at the linear combination level. This is by exploiting the dispersive nature of multipath errors in order to model and correct them. New carrier multipath mitigation techniques applicable to linear combinations of measurements have been developed in this thesis on the basis of a new error model and a new observable referred to as the IFM (Inter-Frequency carrier Multipath). The IFM is computed from carrier phase measurements at two different frequencies, and corresponds to the combined multipath errors of those signals. In addition to multipath mitigation, this observable has various other applications. The well-defined relationship between the IFM and carrier multipath errors is used in this thesis to develop multipath mitigation techniques based on two approaches: multipath correction and measurement weighting. The new mitigation techniques are applicable to linear combinations of observations such as Wide Lane (WL) and Ionosphere Free (IF) carrier phase measurements in double differenced mode. The new multipath mitigation techniques have been validated using real data and the results compared with those obtained using the elevation weighting technique. The results show that the new methods developed in this thesis improve the mean error of horizontal position by up to 33% when using the IF combination. The results also show improvements of up to 78% in the time it takes to resolve ambiguities when using the WL combination.Open Acces

Single point positioning using GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou satellites

This paper introduces the Chinese BeiDou satellite system and its comparison with the actual completed American GPS and the Russian GLONASS systems. The actual BeiDou system consists of 14 satellites covering totally the Asia -Pacific area. A Single Point Positioning (SPP) test has been realised in Changsha, Hunan province, China, to show the advantage of using combined pseud o- range solutions from these 3 satellite navigation systems especially in obstructed sites. The test shows that, with an elevation mask angle of 10 ° , the accuracy is improved by about 20% in hor i- zontal coordinates and nearly 50% in the vertical component using the simultaneous observa tions of the 3 systems compared to the GPS/GLONASS solution. For the processing with an elev ation mask angle of 30 ° , most of the time less than 4 GPS satellites were available for the GPS- only case and no solution was possible. However, in this difficult situation, the combined GPS/GLON ASS/ BeiDou solutions provided an accuracy (rms values) of about 5 m

Multi-GNSS integer ambiguity resolution enabled precise positioning

In this PhD thesis multi-Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning results when combining the American Global Positioning System (GPS), Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), European Galileo and Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) will be presented. The combined systems will be evaluated in comparison to the single-systems, for short (atmosphere-fixed) to long (atmosphere-present) baselines. It will be shown that the combined systems can provide for improved integer ambiguity resolution and positioning performance over the single-systems

Low-cost, high-precision, single-frequency GPS–BDS RTK positioning

The integration of the Chinese BDS with other systems, such as the American GPS, makes precise RTK positioning possible with low-cost receivers. We investigate the performance of low-cost ublox receivers, which cost a few hundred USDs, while making use of L1 GPS + B1 BDS data in Dunedin, New Zealand. Comparisons will be made to L1 + L2 GPS and survey-grade receivers which cost several thousand USDs. The least-squares variance component estimation procedure is used to determine the code and phase variances and covariances of the receivers and thus formulate a realistic stochastic model. Otherwise, the ambiguity resolution and hence positioning performance would deteriorate. For the same reasons, the existence of receiver-induced time correlation is also investigated. The low-cost RTK performance is then evaluated by formal and empirical ambiguity success rates and positioning precisions. It will be shown that the code and phase precision of the low-cost receivers can be significantly improved by using survey-grade antennas, since they have better signal reception and multipath suppression abilities in comparison with low-cost patch antennas. It will also be demonstrated that the low-cost receivers can achieve competitive ambiguity resolution and positioning performance to survey-grade dual-frequency GPS receivers

On the short-term temporal variations of GNSS receiver differential phase biases

As a first step towards studying the ionosphere with the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), leveling the phase to the code geometry-free observations on an arc-by-arc basis yields the ionospheric observables, interpreted as a combination of slant total electron content along with satellite and receiver differential code biases (DCB). The leveling errors in the ionospheric observables may arise during this procedure, which, according to previous studies by other researchers, are due to the combined effects of the code multipath and the intra-day variability in the receiver DCB. In this paper we further identify the short-term temporal variations of receiver differential phase biases (DPB) as another possible cause of leveling errors. Our investigation starts by the development of a method to epoch-wise estimate between-receiver DPB (BR-DPB) employing (inter-receiver) single-differenced, phase-only GNSS observations collected from a pair of receivers creating a zero or short baseline. The key issue for this method is to get rid of the possible discontinuities in the epoch-wise BR-DPB estimates, occurring when satellite assigned as pivot changes. Our numerical tests, carried out using Global Positioning System (GPS, US GNSS) and BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS, Chinese GNSS) observations sampled every 30 s by a dedicatedly selected set of zero and short baselines, suggest two major findings. First, epoch-wise BR-DPB estimates can exhibit remarkable variability over a rather short period of time (e.g. 6 cm over 3 h), thus significant from a statistical point of view. Second, a dominant factor driving this variability is the changes of ambient temperature, instead of the un-modelled phase multipath

The Potency of the Modernized GNSS Signals for Real-Time Kinematic Positioning

GNSS positioning has become popular in the past decade as an efficient method of precise and real-time positioning. It is relatively low cost and ease-of-use. Up to now, several parameters were defined to characterize the performance of real-time positioning: availability, precision, accuracy. This article evaluates the performance of signal linear combinations for real-time positioning, both for static as well as the kinematic positioning. This article starts with the investigation of linear combinations (LC) rising from the carrier frequencies of the GNSS systems. Some Linear Combination shows potential benefits in carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution, particularly utilizing the Galileo and Beidou signal phase carrier. For each system, a set of combinations was studied, analyzed, and then selected during the development of GNSS positioning method utilizing the Least-squares Ambiguity Decorrelation Adjustment (LAMBDA). Special signal selection can affect the estimated position and its standard deviation. To further analyze, the results obtained from data processing are compared with respect to baselines and signals. The ambiguity fixing rate is correlated with the baseline length and the method as well as the signals that were used. The analysis of the measurement noise level was first conducted to set a baseline for the real-time GNSS positioning application. According to the results and to assess the data quality and positioning performance of GNSS in respect with GPS (Global Positioning System), an experimental test has established using MGEX data. This research investigates the satellite visibilities, multipath, Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), and positioning performance. It is shown that in every epoch, at least 8 satellites are visible. The SNR’s are up to 60 dBHz, the code multipath residuals varies within ~1 m, while the phase residuals varies by about ~2 cm. hence the modernized GNSS signals have potencies to improves the RTK positioning

Parametric models for a database of realistic threats to GNSS receivers

Threats to GNSS receivers are becoming increasingly complex and easier to implement due to technological advancement. So, these attacks have become now a serious problem for any user, not only, for example, for military or safety-of-life purposes anymore. In this context, TAM has been created to collect data about these attacks and possible mitigations. This thesis describes how tested threat scenarios to GNSS signals have been parameterized to be inserted in the TAM database.openEmbargo tempraneo per motivi di segretezza e/o di proprietà dei risultati e informazioni di enti esterni o aziende private che hanno partecipato alla realizzazione del lavoro di ricerca relativo alla tes

Position, velocity and time measurement with multiple constellation data from GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS and BEIDOU

Il presente lavoro si propone di illustrare la teoria, il metodo e le modalità del calcolo della PVT, ovvero della posizione, della velocità e del sincronismo temporale, di un utente sulla Terra o di un satellite in orbita bassa (dotato di ricevitore multiGNSS), utilizzando un software integrato che sfrutti tutti i segnali provenienti da tutte le costellazioni a copertura globale in quel momento visibili. Nel caso presente si sono utilizzati i segnali da GPS, Galileo, GLONASS e BeiDou, rilevati grazie ad un ricevitore fornito dall'Università di Padova (STONEX S580), sia per la determinazione della posizione, sia per implementare il calcolo della velocità attraverso l'effetto Doppler. Questo lavoro, in futuro, potrebbe portare a contributi nello sviluppo di tecnologie innovative in molti settori, quali: navigazione autonoma e trasporti, difesa e aerospazio, agricoltura e molti altri.This work intends to outline the theory and the methods for the computation of position, velocity and time (PVT) of a user on the surface of the Earth or of a LEO satellite (Low Earth Orbit). An integrated software written in MATLAB and PERL has been used; it processes all the signals transmitted by all the constellations visible in that precise moment and in that precise place. The software's core uses the Weighted Least Squares algorithm, which permits the efficient computation of position, speed, timing and tropospheric delay in a few iterations. In this thesis, signals from GPS, Galileo, BeiDou and GLONASS have been used, specifically for the computation of the speed, which is calculated from the Doppler Effect. These signals were detected through a receiver STONEX Cube-a S580 provided by the University of Padua. A good precision in determination of both positioning and speed has been achieved and also the PNT of a LEO satellite (Sentinel 3A) has been determined successfully, using data also to study J2 perturbations on the orbit. The principal aim of this thesis is to provide an efficient and precise software able to process pseudorange and Doppler shift multi-constellation data, to enhance, in its future evolutions, the precise positioning of a receiver on Earth's surface and in orbit, with interesting applications in many different fields such as defence, transportations and automotive, attitude determination in space and many others