Search

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) have become a ubiquitous tool for our modern society to carry out vital tasks such as transportation, civil engineering or precision agriculture. This breath has reached the realm of safety-critical applications such as time management of critical infrastructures or autonomous vehicles, in which GNSS is an essential tool nowadays. Unfortunately, current GNSS performance is not enough to fulfill the requirements of these professional and critical applications. For this reason, the FANTASTIC project was launched to boost the adoption of these applications. The project was funded by the European GNSS agency (GSA) in order to enhance the robustness and accuracy of GNSS in harsh environments. This paper presents the part related to the development of a weighting and exclusion function with a dual circularly polarized antenna. The idea is to reduce the effects of multipath by weighting and/or excluding those measurements affected by multipath. The observables and other metrics obtained from a dual polarized antenna will be exploited to define an exclusion threshold and to provide the weights. Real-world experiments will show the improvement in the positioning solution, using all available constellations, obtained with the developed technique.

This paper focuses on the exploitation of fifth generation (5G) centimetre-wave (cmWave) and millimetre-wave (mmWave) transmissions for high-accuracy positioning, in order to complement the availability of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in harsh environments, such as urban canyons. Our goal is to present a representative methodology to simulate and assess their hybrid positioning capabilities over outdoor urban, suburban and rural scenarios. A novel scenario definition is proposed to integrate the network density of 5G deployments with the visibility masks of GNSS satellites, which helps to generate correlated scenarios of both technologies. Then, a generic and representative modeling of the 5G and GNSS observables is presented for snapshot positioning, which is suitable for standard protocols. The simulations results indicate that GNSS drives the achievable accuracy of its hybridisation with 5G cmWave, because non-line-of-sight (NLoS) conditions can limit the cmWave localization accuracy to around 20 m. The 5G performance is significantly improved with the use of mmWave positioning with dominant line-of-sight (LoS) conditions, which can even achieve sub-meter localization with one or more base stations. Therefore, these results show that NLoS conditions need to be weighted in 5G localization, in order to complement and outperform GNSS positioning over urban environments.

This paper considers channel estimation and system performance for the uplink of a single-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output system. Each receiver antenna of the base station is assumed to be equipped with a pair of one-bit analog-to-digital converters to quantize the real and imaginary part of the received signal. We first propose an approach for channel estimation that is applicable for both flat and frequency-selective fading, based on the Bussgang decomposition that reformulates the nonlinear quantizer as a linear function with identical first- and second-order statistics. The resulting channel estimator outperforms previously proposed approaches across all SNRs. We then derive closed-form expressions for the achievable rate in flat fading channels assuming low SNR and a large number of users for the maximal ratio and zero forcing receivers that takes channel estimation error due to both noise and one-bit quantization into account. The closed-form expressions, in turn, allow us to obtain insight into important system design issues such as optimal resource allocation, maximal sum spectral efficiency, overall energy efficiency, and number of antennas. Numerical results are presented to verify our analytical results and demonstrate the benefit of optimizing system performance accordingly.

To enhance the robustness of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) against malicious attacks (e.g., spoofing), the European Galileo is working on new services, like Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA), which provides authentication on the navigation bits, or Commercial Authentication Service (CAS), which aims to encrypt the spreading code chips. An assisted mode of the latter, named Assisted Commercial Authentication Service (ACAS), is currently under definition by the Galileo program. It uses the Timed Efficient Stream Loss-tolerant Authentication (TESLA) keys provided by OSNMA on the E1-B signal to re-encrypt some fragments of the encrypted E6-C signal, known as Re-Encrypted Code Sequences (RECSs), that are made available in the GNSS Service Centre (GSC). Once downloaded by a compatible receiver, they can be decrypted using the corresponding key and used to perform the correlation with the broadcasted E6-C signal. If that results in a correlation peak, the signal can be authenticated under certain circumstances. However, the probability of detecting this peak depends on the length of these fragments and their periodicity, since they are only provided for certain predefined instants. Indeed, if the receiver relies solely on E6-C signal and has no accurate time reference, this probability is severely degraded. This is why the nominal operating mode proposed for ACAS is to use the estimates provided by E1-B to reduce the uncertainty on the E6-C signal, so that the receiver can know precisely where these fragments are located. In the context of the PAULA project, we have developed a low-cost hardware platform based on bladeRF that allows acquiring both E1-B and E6-C samples synchronously. In this paper, we describe how to set up this platform and we characterise the alignment between the E1-B and E6-C estimates (code phase and Doppler frequency) using the real datasets obtained with such a platform, which is of key importance for the ACAS nominal mode. The results confirm the convenience of using the estimates from the E1-B signal for ACAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the impact of transmitter dynamics on baseband algorithms for position, navigation and timing applications using a low Earth orbit constellation. In particular, the acquisition and tracking of signals with high dynamics have larger Doppler and Doppler drift values that might impair the use of standard methods. Our analysis combines a theoretical assessment of acquisition and tracking thresholds with a performance evaluation by means of a simulation. Three frequency bands are tested (UHF, S and Ka) and an open-source software receiver has been adapted for such a purpose. The results obtained show the potential feasibility of LEO-PNT at baseband level under minimal considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the analysis of chirp spread spectrum (CSS) signals in radar and communication applications, we can distinguish the cases of estimating only data or time-delay propagation or Doppler frequency when all the other parameters are known or set to zero. The case of estimating all three parameters at the same time has not been treated in the literature of radar or communications. We consider in this paper the use of a CSS signal for a LEO-PNT signal, which perfectly fits with the case of estimating the three parameters mentioned above. Specifically, the main goal of this paper is to explain the design of a CSS signal for PNT. This will include the design of the ranging component and the data component. The performance evaluation of both components will also be analyzed and linked. It is important to note that the focus of this paper will be the data component, and we link it with the pilot component through sensitivity performance. The results given in this paper show the capabilities of CSS for PNT. Previous works have shown accuracies on the level of meters with achievable data rates shown in this paper in the order of tens of kbps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative benchmarking of different beamforming techniques for robust multipath and spoofing mitigation in handheld receivers equipped with a small number of antenna elements. In the field of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs), multipath and spoofing have become major sources of signal degradation, whereby the presence of closely spaced replicas of the signal of interest hampers the receiver's performance. Spatial filtering through the use of antenna arrays is one appealing approach to combat these effects. However, the upward trend in device miniaturization poses a serious concern for spatial filtering in handheld devices such as tablets or smartphones, particularly for the case of decimeter-wave signals such as in GNSSs. The terminal size constraints lead to deploying arrays with very few antennas, thus degrading the mitigation performance of the above impairments. This work explores the feasibility of performing robust multipath and spoofing mitigation in GNSS receivers with antenna arrays of very small sizes. Simulation results on four-antenna rectangular and two-antenna linear array distributions are provided, showing that the reduction in array size can be counteracted by the use of advanced beamformers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few years, gradually more systems have relied on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for their correct functioning. These systems include safety-critical applications such as airports or emergency services. Given the wide number of GNSS applications and the current availability of affordable and easily configurable Software-Defined Radio (SDR) devices, GNSS has become the target of numerous Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) attacks. Thus, RFI has become a real threat for GNSS and, hence, for those systems relying on it. With the purpose of detecting, characterizing, and localizing RFI not only in GNSS frequency bands but also in other daily-used frequency bands, a GNSS Interference Monitoring and Detection (GIMAD) prototype has been developed, with special emphasis on its deployment in safety-critical environments such as airports. GIMAD contemplates European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) V3 and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) RFI masks covering both in-band and out-band RFIs. In addition, GIMAD was tested in a real-field scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]