Adaptive Tracking Loop Research Articles

Performance Enhancement and Evaluation of a Vector Tracking Receiver Using Adaptive Tracking Loops

The traditional receiver employs scalar tracking loops, resulting in degraded navigation performance in weak signal and high dynamic scenarios. An innovative design of a vector tracking receiver based on nonlinear Kalman filter (KF) tracking loops is proposed in this paper, which combines the strengths of both vector tracking and KF-based tracking loops. First, a comprehensive description of the vector tracking receiver model is presented, and unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is applied to nonlinear tracking loop. Second, to enhance the stability and robustness of the KF tracking loop, we introduce square root filtering and an adaptive mechanism. The tracking loop based on square root UKF (SRUKF) can dynamically adjust its filtering parameters based on signal noise and feedback Doppler error. Finally, the proposed method is implemented on a software-defined receiver (SDR), and the field vehicle experiment demonstrates the superiority of this method over other tracking methods in complex dynamic environments.

Evaluation of Adaptive Loop-Bandwidth Tracking Techniques in GNSS Receivers.

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers use tracking loops to lock onto GNSS signals. Fixed loop settings limit the tracking performance against noise, receiver dynamics, and the current scenario. Adaptive tracking loops adjust these settings to achieve optimal performance for a given scenario. This paper evaluates the performance and complexity of state-of-the-art adaptive scalar tracking techniques used in modern digital GNSS receivers. Ideally, a tracking channel should be adjusted to both noisy and dynamic environments for optimal performance, defined by tracking precision and loop robustness. The difference between the average tracking jitter of the discriminator’s output and the square-root Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) indicates the loops’ tracking capability. The ability to maintain lock characterizes the robustness in highly dynamic scenarios. From a system perspective, the average lock indicator is chosen as a metric to measure the performance in terms of precision, whereas the average number of visible satellites being tracked indicates the system’s robustness against dynamics. The average of these metrics’ product at different noise levels leads to a reliable system performance metric. Adaptive tracking techniques, such as the fast adaptive bandwidth (FAB), the fuzzy logic (FL), and the loop-bandwidth control algorithm (LBCA), facilitate a trade-off for optimal performance. These adaptive tracking techniques are implemented in an open software interface GNSS hardware receiver. All three methods steer a third-order adaptive phase locked loop (PLL) and are tested in simulated scenarios emulating static and high-dynamic vehicular conditions. The measured tracking performance, system performance, and time complexity of each algorithm present a detailed analysis of the adaptive techniques. The results show that the LBCA with a piece-wise linear approximation is above the other adaptive loop-bandwidth tracking techniques while preserving the best performance and lowest time complexity. This technique achieves superior static and dynamic system performance being 1.5 times more complex than the traditional tracking loop.

Effect of GNSS receiver carrier phase tracking loops on earthquake monitoring performance

This research focuses on the performance of GNSS receiver carrier phase tracking loops for early earthquake monitoring systems. An earthquake was simulated using a hardware simulator and position, velocity and acceleration displacements were obtained to recreate the dynamics of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. Using a software defined receiver, GSNRx, tracking bandwidths of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 and 50Hz along with integration times of 1, 5 and 10ms were tested. Using the phase lock indicator, an adaptive tracking loop was designed and tested to maximize performance for this application.

Design and realization of adaptive tracking loops for GPS receiver

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to improve the tracking performance of the tracking loops under high dynamic and severe jamming conditions. Design/methodology/approach – First, as the two dominant measurement error sources of the tracking loops, the thermal noise jitter and the dynamic stress error are thoroughly analyzed. Second, a scheme of adaptive tracking loops, which could adaptively adjust the order and the bandwidth of tracking loops, is proposed. Third, real-time detections of the vehicle dynamics and the carrier-to-noise density ratio, and the adaptive bandwidth of the carrier loop are presented, respectively. Finally, simulations are operated to validate the excellent tracking performance of the adaptive tracking loops. Findings – Based on the principle of minimizing the measurement errors, the loop order and bandwidth are adaptively adjusted in the proposed scheme. Thus, the anti-jamming capability and dynamic tracking performance of the tracking loops could be effectively enhanced. Pra...

Adaptive hybrid force/position control of robot manipulators using an adaptive force estimator in the presence of parametric uncertainty

This study is devoted to sensorless adaptive force/position control of robot manipulators using a position-based adaptive force estimator (AFE) and a force-based adaptive environment compliance estimator. Unlike the other sensorless method in force control that uses disturbance observer and needs an accurate model of the manipulator, in this method, the unknown parameters of the robot can be estimated along with the force control. Even more, the environment compliance can be estimated simultaneously to achieve tracking force control. In fact, this study deals with three challenging problems: No force sensor is used, environment stiffness is unknown, and some parametric uncertainties exist in the robot model. A theorem offers control laws and updating laws for two control loops. In the inner loop, AFE estimates the exerted force, and then, the force control law in the outer loop modifies the desired trajectory of the manipulator for the adaptive tracking loop. Besides, an updating law updates the estimated compliance to provide an accurate tracking force control. Some experimental results of a PHANToM Premium robot are provided to validate the proposed scheme. In addition, some simulations are presented that verify the performance of the controller for different situations in interaction.

An Innovative Architecture of UTC GPS/INS System with Improved Performance under Severe Jamming

Ultratightly coupled (UTC) architecture is believed to be the best architecture for Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) integration system due to the advanced data fusion strategy and effective mutual assistance between the subsystems. However the performance of UTC GPS/INS system will be degraded by severe jamming interference, especially when low-grade inertial measurement unit (IMU) is used. To solve this problem an innovative architecture of UTC GPS/INS system is proposed. Since GPS receiver’s antijamming ability is closely related to tracking loop bandwidth, adaptive tracking loop bandwidth based on the fuzzy logics is proposed to enhance antijamming ability for GPS receiver. The bandwidth will be adapted through a fuzzy logic controller according to the calculated carrier to noise intensity ratio(C/N0). Moreover, fuzzy adaptive integration Kalman filter (IKF) is developed to improve estimation accuracy of IKF when measurement noises change. A simulation platform is established to evaluate the innovative architecture and results demonstrate that the proposed scheme improves navigation performance significantly under severe jamming conditions.

Use of a reduced IMU to aid a GPS receiver with adaptive tracking loops for land vehicle navigation

A reduced inertial measurement unit (IMU) consisting of only one vertical gyro and two horizontal accelerometers or three orthogonal accelerometers can be used in land vehicle navigation systems to reduce volume and cost. In this paper, a reduced IMU is integrated with a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver whose phase lock loops (PLLs) are aided with the Doppler shift from the integrated system. This approach is called tight integration with loop aiding (TLA). With Doppler aiding, the noise bandwidth of the PLL loop filters can be narrowed more than in the GPS-only case, which results in improved noise suppression within the receiver. In this paper, first the formulae to calculate the PLL noise bandwidth in a TLA GPS/reduced IMU are derived and used to design an adaptive PLL loop filter. Using a series of vehicle tests, results show that the noise bandwidth calculation formulae are valid and the adaptive loop filter can improve the performance of the TLA GPS/reduced IMU in both navigation performance and PLL tracking ability.

Adaptive servo tracking

This paper describes a self-adaptive sampled-data radar tracking loop. The adaptive tracking loop may be considered to be a low-pass filter with a variable bandwidth. The loop is designed to adapt rapidly to changes in the input signal by monitoring both the apparent error and the loop output. Results show a mean tracking accuracy 25 to 34 per cent higher than that of a comparable linear system at a receiver SNR of 10 db. In other terms, to attain the same accuracy the comparable linear system requires a SNR of 13 db. This improvement in performance is obtained with relatively little additional circuitry. In general, the degree of improvement obtained by adaptive tracking will depend on the compromises made in the design of the unadapted loop to track the most difficult type of target.