Design and Implementation of Vector Tracking Loop for High-Dynamic GNSS Receiver

For the tracking of high-dynamic satellite navigation signals, the conventional scalar tracking loop (STL) is vulnerable. Frequent signal-tracking interruption affects the continuity of navigation. The vector tracking loop (VTL) can overcome this disadvantage. However, there are some difficulties in implementing existing vector tracking methods on a real-time hardware receiver, such as the synchronization problem and computation load. This paper proposes an implementation framework of VTL based on a partial open-loop numerically controlled oscillator (NCO) control mode that can be implemented with minor modifications on an existing receiver platform. The structure of VTL, the design of the navigation filter, and the key points of hardware implementation are introduced in detail. Lastly, the VTL performance was verified by a GPS simulator test. The results show that the proposed VTL can run in real-time and be significantly improved in the tracking continuity of high-dynamic signals, tracking sensitivity, positioning accuracy, and recovery time for interrupted signals compared with those of STL.

An Optimized Vector Tracking Architecture for Pseudo-Random Pulsing CDMA Signals

The vector tracking loop (VTL) has high tracking accuracy and a superior ability to track weak signals in GNSS. However, traditional VTL architecture is established on continuous Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) signal and is incompatible with pseudolite positioning systems (PLPS) because PLPS generally adopts a pseudo-random pulsing CDMA signal structure to mitigate the near-far effect. Therefore, this paper proposes an optimized VTL architecture for pseudo-random pulsing CDMA signals. To avoid estimation biases in PLPS, the proposed VTL adopts irregular update periods (IUP) pre-filters which adjust the update cycles according to the active timeslot intervals. Meanwhile, as the active timeslots of different pseudolites do not overlap, the sampling time of the navigation filter inputs is inconsistent and time-varying, causing jitter degradation. Thus, the proposed VTL predicts the measurements so that they can be sampled at the same time, which improves tracking accuracy. Simulation is carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed VTL. The results suggest that the proposed VTL outperforms the traditional pre-filter-based VTL and IUP pre-filter-based VTL.

Design and Validation of a Cascading Vector Tracking Loop in High Dynamic Environments

This paper designs a cascading vector tracking loop based on the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) for high dynamic environment. Constant improvement in dynamic performance is an enormous challenge to the traditional receiver. Due to the doppler effect, the satellite signals received by these vehicles contain fast changing doppler frequency shifts and the first and second derivatives of doppler frequency, which will directly cause a negative impact on the receiver’s stable tracking of the signals. In order to guarantee the dynamic performance and the tracking accuracy, this paper designs a vector carrier structure to estimate the doppler component of a signal. Firstly, after the coherence integral, the IQ values are reorganized into new observations. Secondly, the phase error and frequency of the carrier are estimated through the pre-filter. Then, the pseudorange and carrier frequency are used as the observations of the main filter to estimate the motion state of the aircraft. Finally, the current state is fed back to the carrier Numerical Controlled Oscillator (NCO) as a complete closed loop. In the whole structure, the cascading vector loop replaces the original carrier tracking loop, and the stable signal tracking of code loop is guaranteed by carrier assisted pseudo-code method. In this paper, with the high dynamic signals generated by the GNSS signal simulator, this designed algorithm is validated by a software receiver. The results show that this loop has a wider dynamic tracking range and lower tracking error than the second-order frequency locked loop assisted third-order phase locked loop in high dynamic circumstances. When the acceleration of carrier is 100 g, the convergence time of vector structure is about 100 ms, and the carrier phase error is lower than 0.6 mm.

Performance and Evaluation of GNSS Receiver Vector Tracking Loop Based on Adaptive Cascade Filter

In the scenario of high dynamics and low C/N0, the discriminator output of a GNSS tracking loop is noisy and nonlinear. The traditional method uses a fixed-gain loop filter for error estimation, which is prone to lose lock and causes inaccurate navigation and positioning. This paper proposes a cascaded adaptive vector tracking method based on the KF+EKF architecture through the GNSS Software defined receiver in the signal tracking module and the navigation solution module. The linear relationships between the pseudo-range error and the code phase error, the pseudo-range rate error and the carrier frequency error are obtained as the measurement, and the navigation filter estimation is performed. The signal C/N0 ratio and innovation sequence are used to adjust the measurement noise covariance matrix and the process noise covariance matrix, respectively. Then, the estimated error value is used to correct the navigation parameters and fed back to the local code/carrier NCO. The field vehicle test results show that, in the case of sufficient satellite signals, the positioning error of the proposed method has a slight advantage compared with the traditional method. When there is signal occlusion or interference, the traditional method cannot achieve accurate positioning. However, the proposed method can maintain the same accuracy for the positioning results.