Analysis of signal strength, satellite visibility, position accuracy and ionospheric TEC estimation of IRNSS

Abstract

The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is an indigenously developed satellite navigation system to meet practical needs. The system, comprising a constellation of seven satellites in GEO orbit, has been fully operational since 2018. It is essential to evaluate the performance of the IRNSS continuously for various applications. As a part of ISRO field trial and data collection program an IRNSS Standard Positioning Service User Receiver (UR) placed at ACS College of Engineering (ACSCE), Bangalore, for independent field trial and data collection. The receiver is operational on a $24\times 7$ basis. A MATLAB Graphical User Interface has been developed to analyze and plot the data variation of signal strength, elevation angle, visibility of satellites, user position, position error, geometric dilution of precision (GDOP) and find the availability of the number of satellites plotted for every second based on the received data. From the results, it is observed that the signal strength (C/No) is good, i.e. above 40 dBHz, visibility of satellites at receiver location is good. The mean position at user location is found to be $X=1349700~\mbox{m}$, $Y = 6070902~\mbox{m}$, $Z = 1413860~\mbox{m}$ and latitude of 12.8914 degree, longitude of 77.465 degree and altitude of 739 m. The mean position from IRNSS is compared with Google map results showing a good match. The geometry distance of receiver location with respect to Earth center is estimated and observed. The RMS of position error for L1, L5 and dual frequency (L5+S) at ACSCE, Bangalore, is 9.7444 m, 6.6873 m and 5.6667 m, respectively. Hence, as expected the dual-frequency (L5+S) receiver gives an accurate position rather than the single-frequency signals. The IRNSS TEC is measured using Ionospheric group delay and the pseudo-range of L5 and S band which is collected from ACSCE receiver. A third order Savitzky-Golay-Filtered technique is used for TEC smoothing. RMSE between IRNSS TEC from pseudo-range and GPS TEC is 0.6482 TECU and the correlation coefficient is 0.9981. RMSE between IRNSS TEC from ionospheric delay of L5/S and GPS TEC is 1.971 TECU and the correlation coefficient is 0.9966. Finally, smoothed TEC values derived from pseudo-range measurements give a good result and can be used to generate daily TEC maps. In order to analyze the performance of IRNSS over the Indian region, we have chosen three other receiver stations located at Osmania University (Hyderabad), University of Burdwan (Bardhaman, West Bengal) and Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University (Katra, Jammu and Kashmir). Based on the results, we conclude that the IRNSS constellation is performing well and providing good signals for accurate user position determination and ionospheric data analysis.