Galileo E1 Research Articles

TD-AltBOC: A new COMPASS B2 modulation

AltBOC(15,10) is the baseline of COMPASS B2 signal modulation. It is a BOC-like signal having different PN codes in the lower and the upper main split lobes, which allow one signal service per lobe. The two lobes can be received and processed separately like two BPSK(10) signals, or coherently processed to achieve better performance. Interoperability among COMPASS B2, Galileo E5 and GPS L5 is also achievable using AltBOC modulation. However, Galileo’s 4-code AltBOC has drawbacks such as low efficiency and great receiver complexity. This paper presents a new modulation type named TD-AltBOC (Time Division AltBOC). The signal generation scheme and receiving method are presented, and are compared with AltBOC in the areas of power spectrum, ranging accuracy, anti-multipath performance, anti-interference performance, processing flexibility and complexity. Analysis results show TD-AltBOC has similar spectrum characteristics, interoperability, flexibility and anti-interference performance with AltBOC. When the frontend bandwidth is more than 50 MHz, TD-AltBOC can achieve better ranging accuracy and anti-multipath performance. It also has such advantages as high efficiency and low receiver complexity. TD-AltBOC could be a good solution to COMPASS B2 navigation signal.

Effect of Narrowband Interference on Galileo E1 Signal Receiver Performance

Satellite navigation technology is becoming essential for civil application. The high-accuracy navigation service is demanded. However, the satellite signal may be exposed to the signal from other systems, which are sharing the same frequency band. This is a potential threat for the performance of navigation devices. The aim of this paper is to present an interference impact assessment in the context of global navigation based on the new modulation Composite Binary Offset Carrier (CBOC) that will be used for Galileo E1 civil signal. The focus is on the analysis of the Galileo CBOC-modulated signal robustness against narrowband interference.

Advanced Multipath Mitigation Techniques for Satellite-Based Positioning Applications

Multipath remains a dominant source of ranging errors in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) or the future European satellite navigation system Galileo. Multipath is generally considered undesirable in the context of GNSS, since the reception of multipath can make significant distortion to the shape of the correlation function used for time delay estimation. However, some wireless communications techniques exploit multipath in order to provide signal diversity though in GNSS, the major challenge is to effectively mitigate the multipath, since we are interested only in the satellite-receiver transit time offset of the Line-Of-Sight (LOS) signal for the receiver's position estimate. Therefore, the multipath problem has been approached from several directions in order to mitigate the impact of multipath on navigation receivers, including the development of novel signal processing techniques. In this paper, we propose a maximum likelihood-based technique, namely, the Reduced Search Space Maximum Likelihood (RSSML) delay estimator, which is capable of mitigating the multipath effects reasonably well at the expense of increased complexity. The proposed RSSML attempts to compensate the multipath error contribution by performing a nonlinear curve fit on the input correlation function, which finds a perfect match from a set of ideal reference correlation functions with certain amplitude(s), phase(s), and delay(s) of the multipath signal. It also incorporates a threshold-based peak detection method, which eventually reduces the code-delay search space significantly. However, the downfall of RSSML is the memory requirement which it uses to store the reference correlation functions. The multipath performance of other delay-tracking methods previously studied for Binary Phase Shift Keying-(BPSK-) and Sine Binary Offset Carrier- (SinBOC-) modulated signals is also analyzed in closed loop model with the new Composite BOC (CBOC) modulation chosen for Galileo E1 signal. The simulation results show that the RSSML achieves the best multipath mitigation performance in a uniformly distributed two-to-four paths Rayleigh fading channel model for all three modulated signals.

Comparative study on joint data/pilot strategies for high sensitivity Galileo E1 open service signal acquisition

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) with the ability to provide accurate positioning and timing information have become very important for many essential applications of both military and civil purposes. The upcoming European GNSS, Galileo system, foresees providing new advanced signals aiming to improve the receiver sensitivity. Towards the objective of a high sensitivity Galileo receiver architecture capable of operating anywhere at any time, the authors introduce possible joint data/pilot acquisition strategies to adapt with the problem of low received signal power in indoor environments. Analytical expressions as well as Monte Carlo simulations in indoor scenarios are presented to describe and prove the strategies improvement with respect to the conventional one currently operating inside GPS receivers. Additionally, based on the performance comparison among all the strategies, some applicable suggestions with respect to different operation modes are provided as the main contribution here.

Partial integer decorrelation: optimum trade-off between variance reduction and bias amplification

Different techniques have been developed for determining carrier phase ambiguities, ranging from float approximations to the efficient solution of the integer least square problem by the LAMBDA method. The focus so far was on double-differenced measurements. Practical implementations of the LAMBDA method lead to a residual probability of wrong fixing of the order one percent. For safety critical applications, this probability had to be reduced by eight orders of magnitude, which could be achieved by linear multi-frequency code–carrier combinations. Scenarios with single or no differences include biases due to orbit errors, satellite clock offsets, as well as residual code and phase biases. For this case, a linear combination of Galileo E1 and E5 code and carrier phase measurements with a wavelength of 3.285 m and a noise level of a few centimeters is derived. This ionosphere-free combination preserves the orbit and clock errors, and suppresses the E1 code multipath by 12.6 dB. Since integer decorrelation transformations, as used in the LAMBDA method, inflate biases, the number of such transformations must be limited, and applied in a judicious order. With a Galileo type constellation, this leads to a vertical standard deviation of ca. 20 cm, while keeping the probability of wrong fixing extremely low for code biases of 10 cm, and phase biases of 0.1 cycle, combined in a worst case.

AltBOC 변조 특성을 활용한 Galileo E5 신호 수신 소프트웨어 개발

This paper contains the signal receiving algorithm for Galileo E5 AltBOC signal and the development of Galileo E5 signal receiving software. The software runs the process from signal acquisition to extracting measurement data to get navigation solution. It uses logged IF data file as an input. In signal acquisition stage, 1ms and delayed 1ms data are used for reducing correlation ross from secondary code and navigation bit conversion. Signal tracking stage is made of two stages which are coarse tracking and fine tracking. It is for taking advantage of AltBOC characteristic and resolving ambiguity problem due to BOC modulation. The functions of software are verified by signal processing using logged IF data from commercial GNSS simulator.

GNSS Signal Acquisition in the Presence of Sign Transition

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> In this paper, the problem of acquiring the pilot and data channel of the next-generation systems (as Galileo, and GPS modernization) is addressed and analyzed, focusing the majority of the attention to the problem of managing the higher sign reversal transition rate due to the navigation message in the data channel and to the secondary code in the pilot channel. It must be considered that in the case of the Galileo E1 signals, each period of the spreading sequence may suffer of a sign change which can reduce the correlation gain. Moreover, the sign transition occurred on the block of samples being processed produces a correlation peak splitting along the Doppler axis of the search space matrix constructed during the acquisition phase and this may lead to a wrong Doppler estimate. Here, we propose an acquisition detection methodology in order to cope with the aforementioned impairments. The main idea behind the proposed algorithm derives by the fact that even though a sign transition occurs, the total useful signal energy remains unchanged, so it is possible to process the search space in order to recover in a nonambiguous way not only the presence of a satellite but also the correct spreading code delay phase and its Doppler shift. The effectiveness of the proposed method will be deeply assessed with a simulation campaign in terms of detection and false detection rate, which will be presented by means of the so-called receiver operative characteristic curves and compared with the state-of-the-art acquisition methodologies. </para>

Comparison between Galileo CBOC Candidates and BOC(1,1) in Terms of Detection Performance

Many scientific activities within the navigation field have been focused on the analysis of innovative modulations for both GPS L1C and Galileo E1 OS, after the 2004 agreement between United States and European Commission on the development of GPS and Galileo. The joint effort by scientists of both parties has been focused on the multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) which is defined on the basis of its spectrum, and in this sense different time waveforms can be selected as possible modulation candidates. The goal of this paper is to present the detection performance of the composite BOC implementation of an MBOC signal in terms of detection and false alarm probabilities. A comparison among the CBOC and BOC(1,1) modulations is also presented to show how the CBOC solution, designed to have excellent tracking performance and multipath rejection capabilities, does not limit the acquisition process.

Data and Pilot Combining for Composite GNSS Signal Acquisition

With the advent of new global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), such as the European Galileo, the Chinese Compass and the modernized GPS, the presence of new modulations allows the use of special techniques specifically tailored to acquire and track the new signals. Of particular interest are the new composite GNSS signals that will consist of two different components, the data and pilot channels. Two strategies for the joint acquisition of the data and pilot components are compared. The first technique, noncoherent combining, is from the literature and it is used as a comparison term, whereas the analysis of the second one, coherent combining with sign recovery, represents the innovative contribution of this paper. Although the analysis is developed with respect to the Galileo E1 Open Service (OS) modulation, the obtained results are general and can be applied to other GNSS signals.

Performance of the Proposed Galileo CBOC Modulation in Heavy Multipath Environment

In the framework of the modernization plans of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) a new Multiplexed Binary Offset Carrier (MBOC) modulation has been proposed as a possible Signal-In-Space (SIS) with improved performance with respect to the robustness against external sources of degradation. Discussion around such signal format are still on-going at the time of writing, anyway it is the most probable candidate signal that will be adopted by both GPS L1C and the Galileo E1 Open Service (OS) signals [( http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/galileo/documents/doc/2004_06_21_summit_2004_en.pdf , 2004)] as modernization of the present BOC(1,1). In the context of the integration between wireless communication and satellite navigation, one of the major problems is that usually the GNSS receiver has to work in a critical environment characterized by a heavy presence of multipath or interference sources. Some examples are urban canyons or light indoor spaces. These are also typical situations for the usage of personal communications systems. The new MBOC modulation have been studied with the specific goal to create a signal more robust with respect to multipath, bringing the high performance of Galileo in situations in which the present BOC(1,1) shows limitations. In this sense, future Location Based Services (LBS) provided on the basis of the GNSS OS will benefits from this intrinsic robustness of the signal. Throughout the paper a review of the MBOC structure will be presented, specifying that in the Galileo framework such a structure has been proposed in a version named Composite BOC (CBOC). In particular, the paper presents the simulation of the CBOC behavior in presence of multipath showing the extreme improvement with respect to other BOC solutions.

Galileo civil signal modulations

Spectrum limitations for navigation systems require that the various navigation signals broadcast by the Galileo system must be combined and must utilize bandwidth-efficient modulations. At the L1 band, one of the most important questions is how to combine all the Open Service signals and the Public Regulated Service signal at the payload level, while maintaining good performance at reception. The Interplex modulation, a particular phase-shifted-keyed/phase modulation (PSK/PM), was chosen to transmit these signals because it is a constant-envelope modulation, thereby allowing the use of saturated power amplifiers with limited signal distortion. The Interplex modulation was also taken as baseline at the E6 band to transmit the three channels and the services associated on the same carrier frequency. At the E5 band, the modulation must combine two different services on a same constant envelope composite signal, while keeping the simplicity of a BOC implementation. The constant envelope Alternate Binary Offset Carrier (ALTBOC) modulation was chosen as the solution to transmit the Galileo E5 band signal. The main objective of this paper is to study these Galileo modulations. After the introduction, the E5 band signals are described, followed by the Alternate BOC modulation which has been chosen to transmit them. The second part describes the general formulation of the Interplex modulation and its key parameters for an optimal multiplexing of the Galileo L1 band signals. Since the Galileo Open Service signals at the L1 band are still not yet completely specified, different test cases are considered and their impact on the resulting choice for the Interplex modulation parameters is exposed.