Abstract:
Continuous and precise code delay tracking is essential in challenging environments such as urban canyons where multipath and frequent signal blockage may lead to perform...Show MoreMetadata
Abstract:
Continuous and precise code delay tracking is essential in challenging environments such as urban canyons where multipath and frequent signal blockage may lead to performance degradation and loss of lock of signals. The strobe correlator (SC) is an effective technique for baseband multipath mitigation and is commonly used for GNSS signal tracking enhancement. An SC has two pairs of early and late correlators, one with a wide and another with a narrow correlator spacing. This article extends the conventional SC design by applying its correlator pairs on dual-band GNSS signals to realize an extended strobe correlator (ESC). An ESC takes advantage of the natural distinct bandwidth of narrow-band and wide-band signals, e.g., L1 C/A and L5Q signals, to form a dual-band combination at the correlator level in a deeply coupled manner. Narrow-band L1 signal tracking ensures robustness, while the wide-band L5 signal improves the tracking precision. A moving average window filters the L1 measurement to prevent the noise impact on L5 tracking, providing necessary interband assistance to resolve challenges such as code delay misalignment and precision mismatch. Through both Monte Carlo simulation and real data collected in urban environments, this work demonstrates that an ESC can achieve improved overall robustness against loss-of-lock and multipath mitigation performance over standalone tracking. Compared with KF-based combined (KFC-based) tracking, ESC has higher tracking precision under weak signal environment and robustness during signal blockage, but larger residual multipath error.
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems ( Volume: 59, Issue: 5, October 2023)