Space-Time Equalization Techniques for New GNSS Signals
October 1, 2011 By: Pratibha B. Anantharamu, Daniele Borio, Gérard Lachapelle GPS World
Space-time adaptive processing structure proposed for BOC signal tracking; the temporal filter provides signal with unambiguous ACF whereas the spatial filter provides enhanced performance with respect to multipath, interference, and noise.
Spatial and temporal information of signals received from multiple antennas can be applied to mitigate the impact of new GPS and Galileo signals’ binary-offset sub-carrier, reducing multipath and interference effects.
New modernized GNSS such as GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and Compass broadcast signals with enhanced correlation properties as compared to the first generation GPS signals. These new signals are characterized by different modulations that provide improved time resolution, resulting in more precise range measurements, along with the advantage of being more resilient to multipath and RF interference. One of these modulations is the binary-offset-carrier (BOC) modulation transmitted by Galileo and modernized GPS.
Despite the benefits of BOC modulation schemes, difficulties in tracking BOC signals can arise. The autocorrelation function (ACF) of BOC signals is multi-peaked, potentially leading to false peak-lock and ambiguous tracking. Intense research activities have produced different BOC tracking schemes that address the issue of multi-peaked BOC signal tracking. Additionally, new tracking schemes including space-time processing can be adopted to further improve the performance of existing algorithms.
Space-time equalization is a technique that utilizes spatial and temporal information of signals received from multiple antennas to compensate for the effects of multipath fading and co-channel interference. In the context of BOC signals, these kinds of techniques can be applied to mitigate the impact of the sub-carrier, which is responsible for a multi-peaked ACF, reducing multipath and interference effects. In temporal processing, traditional equalizers in time-domain are useful to compensate for signal distortions. But equalization becomes more challenging in the case of BOC signals, where the effect of both sub-carrier and multipath must be accounted for. On the other hand, by using spatial processing, it should be possible to extract the desired signal component from a set of received signals by electronically varying the antenna array directivity (beamforming).
The combination of an antenna array and a temporal equalizer results in better system performance. Hence the main objective of this research is to apply space-time processing techniques to BOC modulated signals received by an antenna array. The main intent is to enhance the signal quality, avoid ambiguous tracking and improve tracking performance under weak signal environments or in the presence of harsh multipath components.
The focus of previous antenna-array processing using GNSS signals was on enhancing GNSS signal quality and mitigating interference and/or multipath related issues. Unambiguous tracking was not considered. Here, we develop a space-time algorithm to mitigate ambiguous tracking of BOC signals along with improved signal quality. The main objective is to obtain an equalization technique that can operate on BOC signals to provide unambiguous BPSK-like correlation function capable of altering the antenna array beam pattern to improve the signal to interference plus noise ratio.
Initially, temporal equalization based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) technique is considered to obtain unambiguous ACF on individual antenna outputs. Spatial processing is then applied on the correlator outputs based on a modified minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) approach. As part of spatial processing, online calibration of the real antenna array is performed which also provides signal and noise information for the computation of the beamforming weights. Finally, the signal resulting from temporal and spatial equalization is fed to a common code and carrier tracking loop for further processing.
The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated by simulating different antenna array structures for BOC signals. Intermediate-frequency (IF) simulations have been performed and linear/planar array structures along with different signal to interference plus noise ratios have been considered. A modified version of The University of Calgary software receiver, GSNRx, has been used to simultaneously process multi-antenna data. Further tests have been performed using real data collected from Galileo test satellites, GIOVE-A and GIOVE-B, using an array structure comprising of two to four antennas. A 4-channel front-end designed in the PLAN group, and a National Instruments (NI) signal vector analyzer equipped with three PXI-5661 front-ends (NI 2006) have been used to collect data synchronously from several antennas. The data collected from the antennas were progressively attenuated for the analysis of the proposed algorithm in weak signal environments.
From the performed tests and analysis, it is observed that the proposed methodology provides unambiguous ACF. Spatial processing is able to efficiently estimate the calibration parameters and steer the antenna array beam towards the direction of arrival of the desired signal. Thus, the proposed methodology can be used for efficient space-time processing of new BOC modulated GNSS signals.
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