scholarly journals Positioning Performance Limits of GNSS Meta-Signals and HO-BOC Signals

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 3586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Ortega ◽  
Daniel Medina ◽  
Jordi Vilà-Valls ◽  
François Vincent ◽  
Eric Chaumette

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are the main source of position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information and will be a key player in the next-generation intelligent transportation systems and safety-critical applications, but several limitations need to be overcome to meet the stringent performance requirements. One of the open issues is how to provide precise PNT solutions in harsh propagation environments. Under nominal conditions, the former is typically achieved by exploiting carrier phase information through precise positioning techniques, but these methods are very sensitive to the quality of phase observables. Another option that is gaining interest in the scientific community is the use of large bandwidth signals, which allow obtaining a better baseband resolution, and therefore more precise code-based observables. Two options may be considered: (i) high-order binary offset carrier (HO-BOC) modulations or (ii) the concept of GNSS meta-signals. In this contribution, we assess the time-delay and phase maximum likelihood (ML) estimation performance limits of such signals, together with the performance translation into the position domain, considering single point positioning (SPP) and RTK solutions, being an important missing point in the literature. A comprehensive discussion is provided on the estimators’ behavior, the corresponding ML threshold regions, the impact of good and bad satellite constellation geometries, and final conclusions on the best candidates, which may lead to precise solutions under harsh conditions. It is found that if the receiver is constrained by the receiver bandwidth, the best choices are the L1-M or E6-Public Regulated Service (PRS) signals. If the receiver is able to operate at 60 MHz, it is recommended to exploit the full-bandwidth Galileo E5 signal. In terms of robustness and performance, if the receiver can operate at 135 MHz, the best choice is to use the GNSS meta-signals E5 + E6 or B2 + B3, which provide the best overall performances regardless of the positioning method used, the satellite constellation geometry, or the propagation conditions.

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1250
Author(s):  
Daniel Medina ◽  
Haoqing Li ◽  
Jordi Vilà-Valls ◽  
Pau Closas

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) play a key role in intelligent transportation systems such as autonomous driving or unmanned systems navigation. In such applications, it is fundamental to ensure a reliable precise positioning solution able to operate in harsh propagation conditions such as urban environments and under multipath and other disturbances. Exploiting carrier phase observations allows for precise positioning solutions at the complexity cost of resolving integer phase ambiguities, a procedure that is particularly affected by non-nominal conditions. This limits the applicability of conventional filtering techniques in challenging scenarios, and new robust solutions must be accounted for. This contribution deals with real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning and the design of robust filtering solutions for the associated mixed integer- and real-valued estimation problem. Families of Kalman filter (KF) approaches based on robust statistics and variational inference are explored, such as the generalized M-based KF or the variational-based KF, aiming to mitigate the impact of outliers or non-nominal measurement behaviors. The performance assessment under harsh propagation conditions is realized using a simulated scenario and real data from a measurement campaign. The proposed robust filtering solutions are shown to offer excellent resilience against outlying observations, with the variational-based KF showcasing the overall best performance in terms of Gaussian efficiency and robustness.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 2928
Author(s):  
Jan Mortier ◽  
Gaël Pagès ◽  
Jordi Vilà-Valls

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is the technology of choice for outdoor positioning purposes but has many limitations when used in safety-critical applications such Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS). Namely, its performance clearly degrades in harsh propagation conditions and is not reliable due to possible attacks or interference. Moreover, GNSS signals may not be available in the so-called GNSS-denied environments, such as deep urban canyons or indoors, and standard GNSS architectures do not provide the precision needed in ITS. Among the different alternatives, cellular signals (LTE/5G) may provide coverage in constrained urban environments and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) ranging is a promising solution to achieve high positioning accuracy. The key points impacting any time-of-arrival (TOA)-based navigation system are (i) the transmitters’ geometry, (ii) a perfectly known transmitters’ position, and (iii) the environment. In this contribution, we analyze the performance loss of alternative TOA-based navigation systems in real-life applications where we may have both transmitters’ position mismatch, harsh propagation environments, and GNSS-denied conditions. In addition, we propose new robust filtering methods able to cope with both effects up to a certain extent. Illustrative results in realistic scenarios are provided to support the discussion and show the performance improvement brought by the new methodologies with respect to the state-of-the-art.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Shen ◽  
Guanghui Xu

Precise position awareness is a fundamental requirement for advanced applications of emerging intelligent transportation systems, such as collision warning and speed advisory system. However, the achievable level of positioning accuracy using global navigation satellite systems does not meet the requirements of these applications. Fortunately, cooperative positioning (CP) techniques can improve the performance of positioning in a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) through sharing the positions between vehicles. In this paper, a novel enhanced CP technique is presented by combining additional range-ultra-wide bandwidth- (UWB-) based measurements. Furthermore, an adaptive variational Bayesian cubature Kalman filtering (AVBCKF) algorithm is proposed and used in the enhanced CP method, which can add robustness to the time-variant measurement noise. Based on analytical and experimental results, the proposed AVBCKF-based CP method outperforms the cubature Kalman filtering- (CKF-) based CP method and extended Kalman filtering- (EKF-) based CP method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 306
Author(s):  
Ahmed Dirir ◽  
Henry Ignatious ◽  
Hesham Elsayed ◽  
Manzoor Khan ◽  
Mohammed Adib ◽  
...  

Object counting is an active research area that gained more attention in the past few years. In smart cities, vehicle counting plays a crucial role in urban planning and management of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Several approaches have been proposed in the literature to address this problem. However, the resulting detection accuracy is still not adequate. This paper proposes an efficient approach that uses deep learning concepts and correlation filters for multi-object counting and tracking. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated using a dataset consisting of 16 videos with different features to examine the impact of object density, image quality, angle of view, and speed of motion towards system accuracy. Performance evaluation exhibits promising results in normal traffic scenarios and adverse weather conditions. Moreover, the proposed approach outperforms the performance of two recent approaches from the literature.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Bury ◽  
Krzysztof Sośnica ◽  
Radosław Zajdel ◽  
Dariusz Strugarek ◽  
Urs Hugentobler

<p>All satellites of the Galileo and GLONASS navigation systems are equipped with laser retroreflector arrays for Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR). SLR observations to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) provide the co-location of two space geodetic techniques onboard navigation satellites.</p><p>SLR observations, which are typically used for the validation of the microwave-GNSS orbits, can now contribute to the determination of the combined SLR+GNSS orbits of the navigation satellites. SLR measurements are especially helpful for periods when the elevation of the Sun above the orbital plane (β angle) is the highest. The quality of Galileo-IOV orbits calculated using combined SLR+GNSS observations improves from 36 to 30 mm for β> 60° as compared to the microwave-only solution. </p><p>Co-location of two space techniques allows for the determination of the linkage between SLR and GNSS techniques in space. Based on the so-called space ties, it is possible to determine the 3D vector between the ground-based co-located SLR and GNSS stations and compare it with the local ties which are determined using the ground measurements. The agreement between local ties derived from co-location in space and ground measurements is at the level of 1 mm in terms of the long-term median values for the co-located station in Zimmerwald, Switzerland.</p><p>We also revise the approach for handling the SLR range biases which constitute one of the main error sources for the SLR measurements. The updated SLR range biases consider now the impact of not only of SLR-to-GNSS observations but also the SLR observations to LAGEOS and the microwave GNSS measurements. The updated SLR range biases improve the agreement between space ties and local ties from 34 mm to 23 mm for the co-located station in Wettzell, Germany.</p><p>Co-location of SLR and GNSS techniques onboard navigation satellites allows for the realization of the terrestrial reference frame in space, onboard Galileo and GLONASS satellites, independently from the ground measurements. It may also deliver independent information on the local tie values with full variance-covariance data for each day with common measurements or can contribute to the control of the ground measurements as long as both GNSS and SLR-to-GNSS observations are available.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alaa A. Elghazouly ◽  
Mohamed I. Doma ◽  
Ahmed A. Sedeek

Abstract Due to the ionosphere delay, which has become the dominant GPS error source, it is crucial to remove the ionospheric effect before estimating point coordinates. Therefore, different agencies started to generate daily Global Ionosphere Maps (GIMs); the Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) values represented in GIMs produced by several providers can be used to remove the ionosphere error from observations. In this research, An analysis will be carried with three sources for VTEC maps produced by the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE), Regional TEC Mapping (RTM), and the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI). The evaluation is focused on the effects of a specific ionosphere GIM correction on the precise point positioning (PPP) solutions. Two networks were considered. The first network consists of seven Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers from (IGS) global stations. The selected test days are six days, three of them quiet, and three other days are stormy to check the influence of geomagnetic storms on relative kinematic positioning solutions. The second network is a regional network in Egypt. The results show that the calculated coordinates using the three VTEC map sources are far from each other on stormy days rather than on quiet days. Also, the standard deviation values are large on stormy days compared to those on quiet days. Using CODE and RTM IONEX file produces the most precise coordinates after that the values of IRI. The elimination of ionospheric biases over the estimated lengths of many baselines up to 1000 km has resulted in positive findings, which show the feasibility of the suggested assessment procedure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (5) ◽  
pp. 1087-1105
Author(s):  
Yawei Zhai ◽  
Jaymin Patel ◽  
Xingqun Zhan ◽  
Mathieu Joerger ◽  
Boris Pervan

This paper describes a method to determine global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) satellite orbits and clocks for advanced receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (ARAIM). The orbit and clock estimates will be used as a reference truth to monitor signal-in-space integrity parameters of the ARAIM integrity support message (ISM). Unlike publicly available orbit and clock products, which aim to maximise estimation accuracy, a straightforward and transparent approach is employed to facilitate integrity evaluation. The proposed monitor is comprised of a worldwide network of sparsely distributed reference stations and will employ parametric satellite orbit models. Two separate analyses, covariance analysis and model fidelity evaluation, are carried out to assess the impact of measurement errors and orbit model uncertainty on the estimated orbits and clocks, respectively. The results indicate that a standard deviation of 30 cm can be achieved for the estimated orbit/clock error, which is adequate for ISM validation.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liviu-Adrian Hîrţan ◽  
Ciprian Dobre ◽  
Horacio González-Vélez

A disruptive technology often used in finance, Internet of Things (IoT) and healthcare, blockchain can reach consensus within a decentralised network—potentially composed of large amounts of unreliable nodes—and to permanently and irreversibly store data in a tamper-proof manner. In this paper, we present a reputation system for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). It considers the users interested in traffic information as the main actors of the architecture. They securely share their data which are collectively validated by other users. Users can choose to employ either such crowd-sourced validated data or data generated by the system to travel between two locations. The data saved is reliable, based on the providers’ reputation and cannot be modified. We present results with a simulation for three cities: San Francisco, Rome and Beijing. We have demonstrated the impact of malicious attacks as the average speed decreased if erroneous information was stored in the blockchain as an implemented routing algorithm guides the honest cars on other free routes, and thus crowds other intersections.


2007 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-153
Author(s):  
A. Farah

Code Single Point Positioning Using Nominal Gnss Constellations (Future Perception) Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have an endless number of applications in industry, science, military, transportation and recreation & sports. Two systems are currently in operation namely GPS (the USA Global Positioning System) and GLONASS (the Russian GLObal NAvigation Satellite System), and a third is planned, the European satellite navigation system GALILEO. The potential performance improvements achievable through combining these systems could be significant and expectations are high. The need is inevitable to explore the future of positioning from different nominal constellations. In this research paper, Bernese 5.0 software could be modified to simulate and process GNSS observations from three different constellations (GPS, Glonass and Galileo) using different combinations. This study presents results of code single point positioning for five stations using the three constellations and different combinations.


GPS Solutions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Darugna ◽  
Jannes B. Wübbena ◽  
Gerhard Wübbena ◽  
Martin Schmitz ◽  
Steffen Schön ◽  
...  

Abstract The access to Android-based Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) raw measurements has become a strong motivation to investigate the feasibility of smartphone-based positioning. Since the beginning of this research, the smartphone GNSS antenna has been recognized as one of the main limitations. Besides multipath (MP), the radiation pattern of the antenna is the main site-dependent error source of GNSS observations. An absolute antenna calibration has been performed for the dual-frequency Huawei Mate20X. Antenna phase center offset (PCO) and variations (PCV) have been estimated to correct for antenna impact on the L1 and L5 phase observations. Accordingly, we show the relevance of considering the individual PCO and PCV for the two frequencies. The PCV patterns indicate absolute values up to 2 cm and 4 cm for L1 and L5, respectively. The impact of antenna corrections has been assessed in different multipath environments using a high-accuracy positioning algorithm employing an undifferenced observation model and applying ambiguity resolution. Successful ambiguity resolution is shown for a smartphone placed in a low multipath environment on the ground of a soccer field. For a rooftop open-sky test case with large multipath, ambiguity resolution was successful in 19 out of 35 data sets. Overall, the antenna calibration is demonstrated being an asset for smartphone-based positioning with ambiguity resolution, showing cm-level 2D root mean square error (RMSE).


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