Unambiguous and precise correlation receiver for binary offset carrier modulated signal

Abstract

SummaryThe binary offset carrier (BOC) modulated signal can improve the positioning accuracy and increase the multipath resistance in global navigation satellite system (GNSS), and it may cause potential ambiguity in the process of signal acquisition and code tracking. In this paper, a simple but efficient unambiguous receiver is firstly proposed for multiple side‐peaks mitigation by implementing correlation of the received BOC signal with local sine wave instead of square wave used at the transmitter. Moreover, the potential degradation of sharpness of the nonlinear correlation induced by the sine wave is well compensated by optimizing the early‐to‐late spacing. The other reason leading to ambiguity is the multipath propagation, so we further propose a maximum likelihood (ML) estimator with Newton iteration method, where the received GNSS signal is modeled via the line‐of‐sight (LOS) component and the first‐arrived non‐line‐of‐sight (NLOS) component. Finally, the analytical expression of multipath propagation Cramer‐Rao bound is derived for the designed ML estimator. Simulation results indicate that compared with the conventional BOC modulation, the proposed sine wave receiver can achieve unambiguous and more precise code tracking performance and thus turns out to be more robust to multipath propagation.