Eamonn P. Glennon

Delayed PIC for Postcorrelation Mitigation of Continuous Wave and Multiple Access Interference in GPS Receivers

Several techniques are available to mitigate the problem of multiple access interference (MAI) caused by the limited dynamic range of the 1023-chip global positioning system (GPS) coarse acquisition Gold codes. MAI causes difficulties in several high-sensitivity applications, including indoor GPS and the use of pseudolites for GPS augmentation. This paper provides details on a variation on the existing techniques of successive interference cancellation (SIC) and parallel interference cancellation (PIC), but with the advantage of being more readily applied. This postcorrelation method is suitable for use in both hardware and software GPS receivers and is able to use commercially available GPS front-end chips employing 2-bit quantization of the received radio signal. The method can also be used to cancel some forms of continuous wave (CW) interference. Simulation results providing statistics on the effectiveness of the technique are provided, as well as results obtained when the technique was implemented in hardware on a GPS receiver based on a field programmable gate array correlator. The proposed method is also compared to some other MAI-mitigating techniques.

Development of a Spaceborne GPS Receiver for Precise Relative Navigation of Formation Flying Small Satellites

Use of the differential carrier phase measurements of the Global Positioning System (GPS) can achieve centimetre-level accuracy thus it can be applied to the relative positioning in formation flying missions. This paper describes the development of a spaceborne GPS receiver upon the UNSW’s Namuru GPS receiver, which is built on the field of field programmable gate array (FGPA). Operating a GPS receiver in low earth orbit (LEO) spacecraft represents a significant challenge compared to normal terrestrial operation. To achieve a high relative accuracy, the spacecraft’s relative navigation algorithms should be carefully designed to deal with the carrier phase measurements. The firmware of the Namuru receiver is revised to address on the concerns of in-orbit operation as well as the precise relative navigation by using the carrier phase measurements of the Namuru receiver. The Spirent GSS6560 GNSS signal simulator is used to test the Namuru receiver as well as the relative navigation algorithm. For two LEO satellites in a 400 km orbit with a separation of 6 km, the relative position of centimetre accuracy has been successfully obtained from the Namuru receivers in the simulations.

An Autonomous Satellite Time Synchronization System Using Remotely Disciplined VC-OCXOs

An autonomous remote clock control system is proposed to provide time synchronization and frequency syntonization for satellite to satellite or ground to satellite time transfer, with the system comprising on-board voltage controlled oven controlled crystal oscillators (VC-OCXOs) that are disciplined to a remote master atomic clock or oscillator. The synchronization loop aims to provide autonomous operation over extended periods, be widely applicable to a variety of scenarios and robust. A new architecture comprising the use of frequency division duplex (FDD), synchronous time division (STDD) duplex and code division multiple access (CDMA) with a centralized topology is employed. This new design utilizes dual one-way ranging methods to precisely measure the clock error, adopts least square (LS) methods to predict the clock error and employs a third-order phase lock loop (PLL) to generate the voltage control signal. A general functional model for this system is proposed and the error sources and delays that affect the time synchronization are discussed. Related algorithms for estimating and correcting these errors are also proposed. The performance of the proposed system is simulated and guidance for selecting the clock is provided.

Using cubesats as platforms for remote sensing with satellite navigation signals

GNSS are now being used for more than just location and navigation. Using GNSS remote sensing technology such as GNSS radio occultation and GNSS reflectometry, advanced GNSS receivers could not only precisely calculate position, but also study the Earths atmosphere, oceans, land surface, ice, etc. Also, CubeSats attract a wide range of applications for scientific use, including GNSS remote sensing. The paper discusses the possibility and research challenges of using miniaturised space-borne GNSS receivers accommodated and operated on a CubeSat bus to achieve those scientific observations. Efforts by ACSER, including its “UNSW EC0” 2U CubeSat and space qualified GNSS receiver design, are also presented.

GNSS receiver implementations to mitigate the effects of commensurate sampling frequencies on DLL code tracking

The sampling frequency of a digitized intermediate frequency signal has a strong effect on the measurement accuracy of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers. The delay-locked loop tracking error is significant when the sampling frequency is an integer multiple of the code chipping rate, the so-called commensurate sampling frequency, and the number of distinct instantaneous residual code phases is low. This results in distortions of the correlation shape and discriminator functions that lead to a significant accuracy degradation. These effects are most pronounced when the sampling frequency is low. Notwithstanding, it is generally good for receivers to keep the sampling frequency to a minimum owing to the processing load and power consumption. It creates a challenge for existing GNSS signal processing techniques. Random, sine and sawtooth jitters have been found to mitigate these distortions considerably. A software algorithm and two hardware receiver implementations of these solutions are proposed. A register-based architecture can be directly applied to the conventional receiver architecture, while the increase in resource and power consumption is insignificant. A RAM-based design cannot only considerably minimize utilized resources but also slightly reduce the power consumption compared to the conventional architecture.

Performance of the High Sensitivity Open Source Multi-GNSS Assisted GNSS Reference Server.

Abstract The Open Source GNSS Reference Server (OSGRS) exploits the GNSS Reference Interface Protocol (GRIP) to provide assistance data to GPS receivers. Assistance can be in terms of signal acquisition and in the processing of the measurement data. The data transfer protocol is based on Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) schema. The first version of the OSGRS required a direct hardware connection to a GPS device to acquire the data necessary to generate the appropriate assistance. Scenarios of interest for the OSGRS users are weak signal strength indoors, obstructed outdoors or heavy multipath environments. This paper describes an improved version of OSGRS that provides alternative assistance support from a number of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). The underlying protocol to transfer GNSS assistance data from global casters is the Networked Transport of RTCM (Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services) over Internet Protocol (NTRIP), and/or the RINEX (Receiver Independent Exchange) format. This expands the assistance and support model of the OSGRS to globally available GNSS data servers connected via internet casters. A variety of formats and versions of RINEX and RTCM streams become available, which strengthens the assistance provisioning capability of the OSGRS platform. The prime motivation for this work was to enhance the system architecture of the OSGRS to take advantage of globally available GNSS data sources. Open source software architectures and assistance models provide acquisition and data processing assistance for GNSS receivers operating in weak signal environments. This paper describes test scenarios to benchmark the OSGRSv2 performance against other Assisted-GNSS solutions. Benchmarking devices include the SPOT satellite messenger, MS-Based & MS-Assisted GNSS, HSGNSS (SiRFstar-III) and Wireless Sensor Networks Assisted-GNSS. Benchmarked parameters include the number of tracked satellites, the Time to Fix First (TTFF), navigation availability and accuracy. Three different configurations of Multi-GNSS assistance servers were used, namely Cloud-Client-Server, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Client-Server and PC-Client-Server; with respect to the connectivity location of client and server. The impact on the performance based on server and/or client initiation, hardware capability, network latency, processing delay and computation times with their storage, scalability, processing and load sharing capabilities, were analysed. The performance of the OSGRS is compared against commercial GNSS, Assisted-GNSS and WSN-enabled GNSS devices. The OSGRS system demonstrated lower TTFF and higher availability.