Relative positioning of multiple moving platforms using GPS

To obtain subdecimeter level accuracy in relative kinematic positioning, the use of double differenced GPS carrier phase measurement with carrier phase ambiguities fixed to their correct integer values must be adopted. If multiple platforms are available in the configuration, the redundancy provided by the multiplicity of platforms can speed up the time to integer ambiguity fixing while at the same time improve the reliability of the solution. An approach to effectively construct ambiguity constraints through the multiplicity of platforms is presented herein. The use of these ambiguity constraints to position multiple moving platforms with respect to each other is then discussed. A series of simulations and field tests are designed and conducted to investigate the effects of different system parameters on this approach, with a configuration of up to 10 moving platforms. The test results show that the use of ambiguity constraints can improve the time to integer ambiguity fixing by up to 67%, relative to the case when no constraints are used. In addition, the use of ambiguity constraints is found to enhance the ability of the multiple platform system to detect wrong ambiguity fixes.     

Analysis of GPS and Loran-C performance for land vehicle navigationin the Canadian Rockies

Loran-C and GPS were assessed for vehicular navigation along selected roads of British Columbia during the winter of 1991. The general topography of this mountainous area is described, together with the specific topographic features and tree coverage characteristics of the 2000 km of roads tested on the mainland and on Vancouver Island. The configuration and characteristics of the Loran C Canadian West Coast chain along the roads used are described. The portable vehicle-mounted system used to collect and analyze the Loran-C and GPS signals along road profiles is described. The performance of Loran-C is analyzed in terms of signal to noise ratios (SNR), field strength, and time-difference distortions, as measured by differential GPS. These distortions, which can reach several hundred meters over distances of less than 20 km, are analyzed in terms of topographic features. The possibility of using these time-independent distortions to calibrate Loran-C for use along the above roads is discussed. Masking of GPS signals due to topographic features and tree coverage along the roads is analyzed. A comparative analysis of both Loran-C and GPS is presented in terms of signal availability and accuracy     

Demonstration of a high sensitivity GNSS software receiver for indoor positioning

Advances in signal processing techniques contributed to the significant improvements of GNSS receiver performance in dense multipath environments and created the opportunities for a new category of high-sensitivity GNSS (HS-GNSS) receivers that can provide GNSS location services in indoor environments. The difficulties in improving the availability, reliability, and accuracy of these indoor capable GNSS receivers exceed those of the receivers designed for the most hostile urban canyon environments. The authors of this paper identified the vector tracking schemes, signal propagation statistics, and parallel processing techniques that are critical to a robust HS-GNSS receiver for indoor environments and successfully incorporated them into a fully functional high-sensitivity software receiver. A flexible vector-based receiver architecture is introduced to combine these key indoor signal processing technologies into GSNRx-hs™ – the high sensitivity software navigation receiver developed at the University of Calgary. The resulting receiver can perform multi-mode vector tracking in indoor environment at various levels of location and timing uncertainties. In addition to the obvious improvements in time-to-first-fix (TTFF) and signal sensitivity, the field test results in indoor environments surrounded by wood, glass, and concrete showed that the new techniques effectively improved the performance of indoor GNSS positioning. With fine GNSS timing, the proposed receiver can consistently deliver indoor navigation solution with the horizontal accuracy of 2–15 m depending on the satellite geometry and the indoor environments. If only the coarse GNSS timing is available, the horizontal accuracy of the indoor navigation solution from the proposed receiver is around 30 m depending on the coarse timing accuracy, the satellite geometry, and the indoor environments. From the preliminary field test results, it has been observed that the signal processing sensitivity is the dominant factor on the availability of the indoor navigation solution, while the GNSS timing accuracy is the dominant factor on the accuracy of the indoor navigation solution.     

User-level reliability monitoring in urban personal satellite-navigation

Monitoring the reliability of the obtained user position is of great importance, especially when using the global positioning system (GPS) as a standalone system. In the work presented here, we discuss reliability testing, reliability enhancement, and quality control for global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning. Reliability testing usually relies on statistical tests for receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) and fault detection and exclusion (FDE). It is here extended by including an assessment of the redundancy and the geometry of the obtained user position solution. The reliability enhancement discussed here includes rejection of possible outliers, and the use of a robust estimator, namely a modified Danish method. We draw special attention to navigation applications in degraded signal-environments such as indoors where typically multiple errors occur simultaneously. The results of applying the discussed methods to high-sensitivity GPS data from an indoor experiment demonstrate that weighted estimation, FDE, and quality control yield a significant improvement in reliability and accuracy. The accuracy actually obtained was by 40% better than with equal weights and no FDE; the rms value of horizontal errors was reduced from 15 m to 9 m, and the maximum horizontal errors were largely reduced.     

ASPeCT: Unambiguous sine-BOC(n,n) acquisition/tracking technique for navigation applications

This article presents a new tracking technique for sine-BOC(n,n) (or Manchester encoded) ranging signals, which is most likely to be a part of the new European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Galileo, signal plan. When traditional sine-BOC(n,n) tracking is considered, although offering excellent performance compared with current signals, it has the main drawback of potentially giving biased measurements. The new method presented herein allows the removal of this threat while maintaining the same level of performance. An adapted version of this technique can also be used for acquisition purposes     

Attitude determination using dedicated and nondedicatedmultiantenna GPS sensors

We show that the use of nondedicated Global Positioning System (GPS) sensors to determine the attitude parameters of a vessel yields the same level of performance as the use of a dedicated multiantenna receiver, namely an agreement of the order of 0.1° (1σ). The test platform is a survey launch operating at cruising speeds of 10 to 15 kt. The dedicated multiantenna receiver is a four-antenna Ashtech 3DF unit, while the nondedicated sensor array consists of three NovAtel GPSCard^TM receivers. The approach used to resolve the relative carrier phase integer ambiguities between the antennas is discussed and the use of antenna baseline constraints is analyzed. A least-squares procedure which utilizes all the position information from the antennas for the estimation of the attitude parameters and their accuracy is presented. The attitude determination results from the two configurations tested are intercompared