Guillaume Carrie

A New Multipath Mitigation Method for GNSS Receivers Based on an Antenna Array

the potential of small antenna array for multipath mitigation in GNSS systems is considered in this paper. To discriminate the different incoming signals (Line of sight and multipaths), a new implementation of the well known SAGE algorithm is proposed. This allows a significant complexity reduction and it is fully compatible with conventional GNSS receivers. Theoretical study thanks to the Cramer Rao Bound derivation and tracking simulation results (in static and dynamic scenarios) show that the proposed method is a very promising approach for the multipath mitigation problem in GNSS receivers.

A New Blind Adaptive Antenna Array for GNSS Interference Cancellation

This paper introduces a new blind adaptive antenna array as a possible solution to the interference cancellation problem. This new technique is compared to three classical ones over two different sensor radiation patterns. Special attention is paid to the array compatibility with a conventional GNSS receiver. A wide radiation pattern sensor is shown to improve the positioning accuracy by maximizing the satellite constellation visibility. Finally, the new processor demonstrates its superiority in term of positioning accuracy in presence of strong interferences. However, its phase response may make it incompatible with classical GNSS receivers. Some efforts must be done to stabilize it.

A Rain Attenuation Time-Series Synthesizer Based on a Dirac and Lognormal Distribution

In Recommendation ITU-R P.1853-1, a stochastic approach is proposed to generate long-term rain attenuation time series , including rain and no rain periods anywhere in the world. Nevertheless, its dynamic properties have been validated so far from experimental rain attenuation time series collected at mid-latitudes only. In the present paper, an effort is conducted to derive analytically the first- and second-order statistical properties of the ITU rain attenuation time-series synthesizer. It is then shown that the ITU synthesizer does not reproduce the first-order statistics (particularly the rain attenuation cumulative distribution function CDF), however, given as input parameters. It also prevents any rain attenuation correlation function other than exponential to be reproduced, which could be penalizing if a worldwide synthesizer that accounts for the local climatology has to be defined. Therefore, a new rain attenuation time-series synthesizer is proposed. It assumes a mixed Dirac-lognormal modeling of the absolute rain attenuation CDF and relies on a stochastic generation in the Fourier plane. It is then shown analytically that the new synthesizer reproduces much better the first-order statistics given as input parameters and enables any rain attenuation correlation function to be reproduced. The ability of each synthesizer to reproduce absolute rain attenuation CDFs given by Recommendation ITU-R P.618 is finally compared on a worldwide basis. It is then concluded that the new rain attenuation time-series synthesizer reproduces the rain attenuation CDF much better, preserves the rain attenuation dynamics of the current ITU synthesizer for simulations at mid-latitudes, and, if it proves to be necessary for worldwide applications, is able to reproduce any rain attenuation correlation function.

A generative MIMO channel model encompassing single satellite and satellite diversity cases

This paper addresses the statistical modeling of MIMO-LMS fading channels. In the absence of accurate experimental results, a statistical model for the characterization of MIMO-LMS channels is proposed based on consolidation of available experimental results for SISO-LMS, SIMO-LMS and MISO-LMS as well as on their extrapolation to the MIMO-LMS and satellite diversity cases of interest.

Stabilizing the Phase Response of Blind Array Processors for GNSS Interference Cancellation

This paper considers blind adaptive antenna arrays as a possible solution to the interference cancellation problem in the GNSS context. The weight vector update in blind nullformers can introduce phase jumps not suitable for a generic GNSS receiver. In order to force a null imaginary part of the array’s response, we consider the design of two classes of blind symmetric arrays with conjugate symmetric weights. Finally, one of both provides a null phase response of the processor; the price is half the degrees of freedom of the array that cannot be used to cancel interferences.

Channel modelling in complex urban environments for testing multipath mitigation methods enhanced by antenna array

Multipaths are one of the major sources of errors for satellite navigation systems. The goal of this article is to present some advances on propagation channel modelling for GNSS mobile users and to show how GNSS receiving algorithms are sensitive to the modelling of the channel. Two channel characteristics are analysed in the paper: the resolution of the environment level of detail, and the resolution of the channel, meaning the number of significant echoes in the tapped-delay line. Particular focus is made on mitigation techniques using antenna arrays to reject multipath. The influence of the channel model will be then interpreted considering three different types of GNSS receiver algorithms, namely conventional DLL/PLL, beam forming and SAGE/STAP algorithm.

Comparison of SAGE and classical multi-antenna algorithms for multipath mitigation in real-world environment

The performance of the Space Alternating Generalized Expectation Maximisation (SAGE) algorithm for multipath mitigation is assessed in this paper. Numerical simulations have already proven the potential of SAGE in navigation context, but practical aspects of the implementation of such a technique in a GNSS receiver are the topic for further investigation. In this paper, we will present the first results of SAGE implementation in a real world environment.

A new GNSS integrity monitoring based on channels joint characterization

Many GNSS (Global Navigation Satellites System) applications need high integrity performances. Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM), or similar method, is commonly used. Initially developed for aeronautics, RAIM techniques may not be fully adapted for terrestrial navigation, especially in urban environments. Those techniques use basically the pseudoranges to derive an integrity criterion. In this paper, we introduce a new integrity criterion based on the correlation quality of each channel. This quality assessment is computed from the correlation levels for each channel, all based on a single position and speed. Hence, as the so-called Direct Position Estimation (DPE), we exploit the joint behaviour of all channels to detect any incoherence at an upstream step of the processing. This Direct RAIM (D-RAIM) allows detecting possible integrity problems before it can be seen on a classical RAIM scheme that only exploits the outputs of each channel.