Analysis of Galileo E5 and E5ab code tracking

The world of global navigation satellite systems has been enhanced with several new or improved signals in space aiming to optimize accuracy, reliability, navigation solution, and interoperability between different constellations. However, such developments bring various challenges to the receivers' designers. For example, acquisition and tracking stages turn into more complex processes while handling the increasing bandwidth requires additional processing power. In this context, we study the code tracking of Galileo E5ab in a full band or of only one of its components, i.e., either E5a or E5b. More specifically, an architecture for tracking the E5 pilot channel as an AltBOC(15,10) or BPSK(10) modulation is introduced, and the performance of well-known discriminator types is analyzed using analytical derivations and simulations of linearity and stability regions, thermal noise tracking errors, multipath error envelopes and tracking thresholds. Different parameters, such as the front-end filter bandwidth, the early/late chip spacing, un-normalized and normalized discriminators, are taken into consideration. The results obtained are used to illustrate the main advantages and drawbacks of tracking the E5 signal as well as to help defining the main tracking loop parameters for an enhanced performanc

Multi-test Detection and Protection Algorithm Against Spoofing Attacks on GNSS Receivers

The vulnerability against interference, spoofing, and jamming of GNSS receivers is considered nowadays a major security concern. This security threat is exacerbated with the existing market availability of GPS jamming and spoofing equipment sold at reasonable prices. If jamming is the main issue faced at present, spoofing, which allows hijacking someone from the expected path, may lead to even worse consequences. Even with the latest security measures that are going to be deployed on the Galileo PRS signals, GNSS receivers are prone to attacks that are relatively easy to implement. In this paper, we identify different countermeasures and security schemes that can be used against spoofing attacks. These countermeasures include some modifications on the GNSS receiver's side, rather than requiring modifications of the whole existing GNSS infrastructure. More specifically, we propose a detection and protection scheme consisting of several statistical tests, based on the computations of moving variances of Doppler offset and C/No estimates, together with a consistency test of the PVT computation. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme through simulations and using a measurement setup consisting of a Spirent GSS8000 full constellation simulator whose output is combined with the one from a rooftop GPS antenna before being fed to a receiver front-end. Finally, we compute the probability of detection and false alarm in spoofing detection using the proposed scheme

Implementing super-efficient FFTs in Altera FPGAs

In this article, an alternative method is proposed to compute a fast Fourier transform (FFT) on Altera FPGAs. This method is using the Altera FFT intellectual property (IP) core, but it is more efficient than the direct use of the Altera FFT IP core, in the sense that the processing time or the resources can be reduced. For the FPGA user, the implementation of the proposed method is more complex than using directly the Altera FFT IP core because additional elements are required, such as a numerically controlled oscillator (NCO) or a memory, a complex multiplier, adders and scaling, but it may be worth it since the decrease in processing time or resources is significant, especially regarding the memory with large FFTs. The proposed method can also be applied to the computation of the convolution or correlation using FFTs

Acquisition of modern GNSS signals using a modified parallel code-phase search architecture

The acquisition of global navigation satellite system signals can be performed using a fast Fourier transform (FFT). The FFT-based acquisition performs a circular correlation, and is thus sensitive to potential transitions between consecutive periods of the code. Such transitions are not occurring often for the GPS L1 C/A signal because of the low data rate, but very likely for the new GNSS signals having a secondary code. The straightforward solution consists in using two periods of the incoming primary code and using zero-padding for the local code to perform the correlation. However, this solution increases the complexity, and is moreover not efficient since half of the points calculated are discarded. This has led us to research for a more efficient algorithm, which discards less points by calculating several sub-correlations. It is applied to the GPS L5, Galileo E5a, E5b and E1 signals. Considering the radix-2 FFT, the proposed algorithm is more efficient for the L5, E5a and E5b signals, and possibly for the E1 signal. The theoretical number of operations can be reduced by 21%, the processing time measured on a software implementation is reduced by 39%, and the memory resources are almost halved for an FPGA implementation

Feature article: High sensitivity acquisition of GNSS signals with secondary code on FPGAs

The modern global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) signals, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) L5 and L1C, and Galileo E5 and E1, have brought several innovations: the introduction of a pilot channel that does not contain any data to allow very long coherent integrations; the introduction of a secondary code to offer better cross-correlations, to facilitate the synchronization with the data, and to help interference mitigation; the introduction of new modulations to reduce the impact of multipath; and the use of higher chipping rates to have better accuracy and interference mitigatio

GNSS BASED ATTITUDE DETERMINATION SYSTEMS FOR NANOSATELLITES

Attitude determination systems based on global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) present several advantages, most of all, for very small satellites. GNSS receivers have low power consumption, limited mass, small volume, and are rel-atively inexpensive. However, if the attitude information is extracted from the relative position between two or more GNSS antennas placed on the nanosatellite, due to the small baseline between them, the achievable accuracy will not be as good as the one obtained with other high performance attitude sensors. In order to circumvent the accuracy limitation, an alternative single-antenna GNSS-based method is presented, which estimates attitude information through the use of the GNSS-derived accelerations

A Low-Power Dual-Frequency RF Front-End Architecture for GNSS Receivers

With the availability in the years to come of several new Global Navigation Satellite Systems transmitting signals located in different frequency bands, the question of the feasibility of multi-frequency receivers aimed at the mass market is of major interest. Most solutions proposed today either use single-frequency receivers in parallel or directly sample the signals at the antenna, two solutions which are not applicable to the mass market. In this paper, a dual-frequency RF front-end architecture with a similar power-consumption and complexity as current state-of-the-art single-frequency front-ends is proposed. It is based on a super-heterodyne architecture and exploits the fact that the L1C/A and L2C signals only occupy 2 MHz of the 20 MHz L1 and L2 bands to allow the simultaneous acquisition and tracking of both the L1C/A and L2C signals

Comparison Framework of FPGA-based GNSS Signals Acquisition Architectures

The acquisition of Global Navigation Satellite Systems signals using Code Division Multiple Access can be performed through classical correlation or using a Fourier transform. These methods are well known but what is missing is a comparison of their performance for a given hardware area or target. This paper presents this comparison for Field Programmable Gate Arrays, describing the different parameters involved in the acquisition, detailing some optimized implementations where hardware elements are duplicated, and estimating and discussing the performances. The influence of the Doppler effect on the code, is also discussed as it plays an important role, particularly for new signals using a high chipping rate

Modified parallel code-phase search for acquisition in presence of sign transition

One of the method to have a fast acquisition of GNSS signals is the parallel code-phase search, which uses the fast Fourier transform (FFT) to perform the correlation. A problem with this method is the potential sign transition that can happen between two code periods due to data or secondary code and lead to a loss of sensitivity or to the non-detection of the signal. A known straightforward solution consists in using two code periods instead of one for the correlation. However, in addition to increasing the complexity, this solution is not efficient since half of the points calculated are discarded. This led us to look for a more efficient algorithm. The algorithm proposed in this article transforms the initial correlation into two smaller correlations. When the radix-2 FFT is used, the proposed algorithm is more efficient for half of the possible sampling frequencies. It is shown for example that the theoretical number of operations can be reduced by about 21 %, and that the memory resources for an FPGA implementation can be almost halved

Analysis of Galileo E5 and E5ab code tracking

The world of global navigation satellite systems has been enhanced with several new or improved signals in space aiming to optimize accuracy, reliability, navigation solution, and interoperability between different constellations. However, such developments bring various challenges to the receivers’ designers. For example, acquisition and tracking stages turn into more complex processes while handling the increasing bandwidth requires additional processing power. In this context, we study the code tracking of Galileo E5ab in a full band or of only one of its components, i.e., either E5a or E5b. More specifically, an architecture for tracking the E5 pilot channel as an AltBOC(15,10) or BPSK(10) modulation is introduced, and the performance of well-known discriminator types is analyzed using analytical derivations and simulations of linearity and stability regions, thermal noise tracking errors, multipath error envelopes and tracking thresholds. Different parameters, such as the front-end filter bandwidth, the early/late chip spacing, un-normalized and normalized discriminators, are taken into consideration. The results obtained are used to illustrate the main advantages and drawbacks of tracking the E5 signal as well as to help defining the main tracking loop parameters for an enhanced performance