A LSTM-RNN-Assisted Vector Tracking Loop for Signal Outage Bridging

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) has been the most popular tool for providing positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information. Some methods have been developed for enhancing the GNSS performance in signal challenging environments (urban canyon, dense foliage, signal blockage, multipath, and none-line-of-sight signals). Vector Tracking Loop (VTL) was recognized as the most promising and prospective one among these technologies, since VTL realized mutual aiding between channels. However, momentary signal blockage from part of the tracking channels affected the VTL operation and the navigation solution estimation. Moreover, insufficient available satellites employed would lead to the navigation solution errors diverging quickly over time. Short-time or temporary signal blockage was common in urban areas. Aiming to improve the VTL performance during the signal outage, in this paper, the deep learning method was employed for assisting the VTL navigation solution estimation; more specifically, a Long Short-Term Memory-Recurrent Neural Network (LSTM-RNN) was employed to aid the VTL navigation filter (navigation filter was usually a Kalman filter). LSTM-RNN obtained excellent performance in time-series data processing; therefore, in this paper, the LSTM-RNN was employed to predict the navigation filter innovative sequence values during the signal outage, and then, the predicted innovative values were employed to aid the navigation filter for navigation solution estimation. The LSTM-RNN was well trained while the signal was normal, and the past innovative sequence was employed as the input of the LSTM-RNN. A simulation was designed and conducted based on an open-source Matlab GNSS software receiver; a dynamic trajectory with several temporary signal outages was designed for testing the proposed method. Compared with the conventional VTL, the LSTM-RNN-assisted VTL could keep the horizontal positioning errors within 50 meters during a signal outage. Also, conventional Support Vector Machine (SVM) and radial basis function neural network (RBF-NN) were compared with the LSTM-RNN method; LSTM-RNN-assisted VTL could maintain the positioning errors less than 20 meters during the outages, which demonstrated LSTM-RNN was superior to the SVM and RBF-NN in these applications.