Holmer Denks

DME/TACAN interference mitigation for GNSS: algorithms and flight test results

The Galileo E5a/E5b signals and the Global Positioning System (GPS) L5 signal lie within the aeronautical radionavigation services (ARNS) band. They suffer interference from the services in this frequency band, in particular, pulsed signals from distance measuring equipment (DME) and tactical air navigation (TACAN) systems. To maintain system accuracy and integrity, interference mitigation is beneficial and necessary. We first present the real DME/TACAN environment at Stanford, CA as an example to illustrate the need for mitigating DME/TACAN interference. We then propose a time and frequency joint mitigation algorithm—Hybrid Blanking and its simplified version, frequency domain adaptive filtering (FDAF) for hardware implementation. Finally, a flight measurements campaign was performed over a European DME/TACAN hotspot near Frankfurt, Germany, to record a worst-case DME interference environment. Recorded data from the flight tests mixed with injected GNSS signals verify the effectiveness of the proposed mitigation algorithm.

Simulation of Multi-Element Antenna Systems for Navigation Applications

The application of user terminals with multiple antenna inputs for use with the global navigation satellite systems like Global Positioning System (GPS) and Galileo has attracted more and more attention in the past years. Multiple antennas may be spread over the user platform and provide signals required for the platform attitude estimation or may be arranged in an antenna array to be used together with array processing algorithms for improving signal reception, e.g., for multi-path and interference mitigation. In order to generate signals for testing of receivers with multiple antenna inputs and corresponding receiver algorithms in a laboratory environment, a unique hardware signal simulation tool for wavefront simulation has been developed. The signals for a number of antenna elements are first generated in a flexible user defined geometry as digital signals in baseband and then mixed up to individual RF-outputs. This paper describes the principle functionality of the system and addresses some calibration issues. Measurement setups and results of data processing with simulated signals for different applications are shown and discussed.

Using of spirent GPS/Galileo HW simulator for timing receiver calibration

In this paper the absolute calibration of GPS time receivers with a Spirent GPS/Galileo HW simulator is analyzed and described in detail. The primary step is to calibrate the simulator itself. In this context the most important facts and values which have to be measured are explained. After the calibration of the simulator the receiver is fed with satellite signals generated by the simulator belonging to a standard GPS satellite constellation to determine the absolute offset of the receiver (internal delay) compared to the simulator output. The used GNSS hardware simulator provides GPS and Galileo signals in parallel and therefore additionally can be used for absolute calibration of combined GPS/Galileo or stand alone Galileo time receivers. As there are no such receivers available yet, the precision of the GPS and Galileo pseudoranges determined by a combined GPS/Galileo receiver is analyzed.

Radio interference effects on commercial GNSS receivers using measured data

Nowadays more and more services rely on the positioning and time synchronization provided by the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) which is worldwide available. The requirements on accuracy are increasing with the number of applications using a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). As more systems in transport, communication and other areas are based on GNSS a degradation of performance might lead to unpredictable risks to economy and safety. Man-made radio frequency interference is one of the last remaining challenges which may result in unforeseeable and potentially devastating threats to GNSS positioning. Therefore the German Aerospace Center performed a measurements campaign in 2006. Out of the radio signals recorded a narrowband pulsed interferer, a communication signal and a wideband colored noise process were extracted and modeled. The impact of these interferers on a commercial GPS receiver was studied in hardware simulations. The results are carried out on pseudorange level as bias, variance and distribution of the range estimate.