Enhancing GNSS Receiver Sensitivity by Combining Signals from Multiple Satellites collective detection

although i have Managed the innovation coluMn continuously since GPS World’s first issue, it wasn’t until the second issue that I authored a column article. That article, co-written with Alfred Kleusberg, was titled “The Limitations of GPS.” It discussed some of the then-current problems of GPS, including poor signal reception, loss of signal integrity, and limited positioning accuracy. In the ensuing 20 years, both signal integrity and positioning accuracy have improved significantly. Advances in the GPS control segment’s capabilities to continuously monitor and assess signal performance, together with receiverautonomous integrity monitoring and integrity enhancement provided by augmentation systems, have reduced worries about loss of signal integrity. The removal of Selective Availability and use of error corrections provided by augmentation systems, among other approaches, have improved positioning accuracy. But the problem of poor reception due to weak signals is still with us. In that March/April 1990 article, we wrote “[GPS] signals propagate from the satellites to the receiver antenna along the line of sight and cannot penetrate water, soil, walls, or other obstacles very well. ... In surface navigation and positioning applications, the signal can be obstructed by trees, buildings, and bridges. ... [In] the inner city streets of urban areas lined with skyscrapers, the ‘visibility’ of the GPS satellites is very limited. In such areas, the signals can be obstructed for extended periods of time or even [be] continuously unavailable.” Poor signal reception in other than open-sky environments is still a problem with conventional GPS receivers. However, extending signal integration times and using assisted-GPS techniques can give GPS some degree of capability to operate indoors and in other restricted environments, albeit typically with reduced positioning accuracy. An antenna with sufficient gain is needed and capable systems are available on the market. The pilot channels of modernized GNSS signals will also benefit signal acquisition and tracking in challenging environments. In this month’s column, we look at a completely different approach to enhancing signal sensitivity. Rather than requiring each satellite’s signal to be acquired and tracked before it can be used in the navigation solution, the new approach — dubbed “collective detection”—combines the received signal power from multiple satellites in a direct-to-navigation-solution procedure. Besides providing a quick coarse position solution with weak signals, this approach can be used to monitor the signal environment, aid deeply-coupled GPS/inertial navigation, and assist with terrain and feature recognition. “Innovation” features discussions about advances in GPS technology, its applications, and the fundamentals of GPS positioning. The column is coordinated by Richard Langley, Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, University of New Brunswick. To contact him with topic ideas, see “Contributing Editors,” page 6. Poor signal reception in difficult environments is still a problem. InnovatIon InsIghts with Richard Langley Growing interest in navigating indoors and in challenging urban environments is motivating research on techniques for weak GPS signal acquisition and tracking. The standard approach to increasing acquisition and tracking sensitivity is to lengthen the coherent integration times, which can be accomplished by using the pilot channels in the modernized GPS signals or by using assisted GPS (A-GPS) techniques. These techniques operate in the traditional framework of independent signal detection, which requires a weak signal to be acquired and tracked before it is useful for navigation. This article explores a complementary, but fundamentally different, approach that enhances signal sensitivity by combining the received power from multiple GPS satellites in a direct-to-navigation-solution algorithm. As will be discussed in the following sections, this collective detection approach has the advantage of incorporating into the navigation solution information from signals that are too weak to be acquired and tracked, and it does so with a modest amount of computation and with no required hardware changes. This technology is appropriate for any application that requires a navigation solution in a signal environment that challenges traditional acquisition techniques. Collective detection could be used to monitor the signal environment, aid deeply coupled GPS/INS during long outages, and help initiate landmark recognition in an urban environment. These examples are explained further in a subsequent section. In order to understand how the collective detection algorithm works, it is instructive to first consider the traditional approach to acquisition and tracking.