Quasi-Pilot Signal Design – Facilitating New Signal Processing Concepts

The use cases of GNSS applications are continuously expanding and new categories of GNSS chipsets are emerging that are driven by needs including low complexity and low power consumption. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are the most prominent representatives of these new user categories. It is understood that existing GNSS signals, which are to a large extent designed to enable high accuracy, are not ideally suited for these emerging user categories. This paper introduces possible concepts identified in the frame of Galileo Evolution activities referred to as Quasi-Pilot (QP) signal that are designed to also comply with the needs of IoT devices. The main driver for the design of a QP signal is the reduction of the acquisition complexity, enabling a rapid and robust time ambiguity resolution together with the possibility of enabling a long coherent integration to achieve sufficient sensitivity in challenging environment if needed. In addition a QP signal design should enable a hand-over to existing legacy signals for the user to exploit also the high accuracy capabilities that these signals offer.