GNSS Signal Distortion Estimation: A Comparative Analysis of L5 Signal from GPS II and GPS III

Abstract

The nonlinear navigation payload transmission channel introduces errors at a system level, resulting in a distortion of the received signal and affecting differential positioning users. This work models the transmission channel of the navigation payload and uses the joint estimation algorithm to calculate the digital distortion and analog channel response of the transmission channel from the received signal. On the above basis, the algorithm and model are verified by GPS-L5 measured data, and the channel characteristics of GPS II and GPS III are deeply analyzed. The results show that the existing GPS IIF satellites have a digital distortion, which is negligible in GPS III satellites. Regarding the analog channel response, GPS III has better amplitude and group delay consistency than GPS II. Lastly, the ranging bias caused by the transmission channel of the navigation payload is provided to the user for reference, and GPS III is improved by approximately 0.02 m compared with GPS II. This study provides support for adjusting the satellite signal pre-distortion and enriches subsequent GNSS signal quality assessment work; it can also be used as a reference for differential positioning users.