GMV uses Skydel SDX for GPS Week Rollover prep

With Orolia’s Skydel SDX API, GMV has developed a “Time Plugin” that allows to batch edit the numerical values associated to TGDs, UTCO and Leap Seconds. (Image: GMV)

GMV uses the flexibility of Skydel SDX to simulate GNSS timing events.

Blog by Ricardo Píriz, GMV, via Skydel Solutions

The upcoming GPS Week Number Rollover (WNRO) on April 6 is a known feature of GPS that occurs only every roughly 20 years and thus can be anticipated and tested in a receiver using a GNSS simulator.

A less-known rollover effect is also present in the Week Number (WN) associated to the UTC Offset (UTCO) transmitted by GPS. This WN has only 8 bits, which implies a range of values from 0-255, equivalent to a rollover every roughly 5 years. A possible failure in the receiver interpretation of the UTCO WN would not have such dramatic effects as a general GPS WNRO, but it could seriously affect the output of a GPS timing receiver.

Other than WN rollovers, un-programmed GNSS timing glitches are extremely rare but not impossible. A well known case is the GPS anomaly of Jan. 25-26, 2016, when around half of the satellites in the constellation transmitted an incorrect UTCO value during 12 hours. The transmitted value was of the order of 13 microseconds, when the correct value is usually of the order of just a few nanoseconds. This caused many timing receivers around the world to provide an incorrect timing information or to fail altogether.

Other fields in the GPS navigation message that could potentially be corrupt and cause incorrect timing output are Timing Group Delays (TGDs), and Leap Second information. In general, any event related to the contents of the GPS navigation message can be simulated by editing the associated bits in the message, for each satellite PRN.

However this is a cumbersome and prone-to-error task. Orolia’s Skydel SDX simulator provides an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows to develop SDX extensions to tackle particular simulation problems in an easy and flexible way.

By using this API, GMV has developed a “Time Plugin” that allows to edit directly on a user interface the numerical values associated to TGDs, UTCO, and Leap Seconds, per individual satellite PRN. These values are then converted to bits in the GPS message and transmitted in the RF stream to feed the receiver under test. Events like, for example, the GPS anomaly of Jan. 25-26, 2016, can be easily tested (as shown in the screenshot).