Snapshot Positioning Without Initial Information
Snapshot Positioning Without Initial Information
Snapshot Positioning Without Initial Information
DOI 10.1007/s10291-016-0530-4
REVIEW ARTICLE
Received: 25 July 2015 / Accepted: 11 March 2016 / Published online: 28 March 2016
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
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Background
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2 3
dx q_ i ¼ Di fd k þ e ð3Þ
6 7
6 dy 7 where q_ i is the range rate of satellite i, Di is the Doppler
dq ¼ HdX þ e ¼ ei 1 i
q_ 6 6 dz 7þe ð1Þ
7
4 db 5 measurement of the same satellite, fd is the receiver clock
dtc frequency drift, k is the wavelength of the carrier fre-
quency, and e represents the errors in the measurement
where dq is the update of the a priori state, i.e., a column (e.g., frequency misalignment and receiver noise).
matrix with the difference between the predicted pseudor- The instantaneous Doppler technique requires the
anges ρ̂ and the measured pseudoranges q (δρ = ρ ρ̂), knowledge of the initial time at which the Doppler mea-
H is the observation matrix that relates the measurements surements are estimated, accurate to the minute level.
with the state vector dX, ei is the estimated receiver-to- When the time is unknown, van Diggelen (2009) also
satellite-i unit vector with the opposite sign, q_ i is the pseu- presents a method to solve the time uncertainty by com-
dorange rate of satellite i, and [dx dy dz db dtc]T is the update puting a solution at least every minute and determining the
of the state vector dX, or the vector of unknowns to solve, correct one by estimating the solution residuals. This
which includes the receiver position (x, y, z), the receiver bias method is further developed by Chen et al. (2014),
b, and the coarse-time difference tc, i.e., the actual mea- requiring about 30-s processing in a standard processor to
surement time minus the estimated measurement time. The solve a 12-h time error. As proven below, the algorithm
measurement and linearization errors are represented by e. proposed in this article can solve a one-day ambiguity in
Notice that q_ i is often called range rate, avoiding the impli- less than half a second.
cation that it contains not only the range rate but also the
satellite and receiver clock rates. The system of equations in
(1) resembles that of standard PVT estimation as described General description of the proposed algorithm
by Misra and Enge (2010), Chapter 6, with the exception that
it adds an unknown tc to the state vector to account for the The proposed new algorithm is based on the combination
coarse synchronization time error. of the instantaneous Doppler positioning algorithm and the
coarse-time navigation algorithm, which leads to what we
will call the coarse-time Doppler navigation algorithm. It
Instantaneous Doppler positioning
introduces an additional unknown to the state vector of the
instantaneous Doppler equations and relates it to the range
As mentioned before, in order to solve the code phase
rate measurements through the acceleration of the satellites
ambiguity, an initial position accurate to about 100 km is
as seen by the receiver.
needed. Receivers connected to a communication network
Figure 2 depicts the case of one satellite and a receiver
may easily obtain such an initial position. In other cases, van
located at P, having an initial time reference t0, off from
Diggelen (2009) describes in Chapter 8 the instantaneous
the measurement time t1 by more than one hour. It also
Doppler algorithm, in which Doppler measurements are used
shows the estimated range rate q_ ðt0Þ at time t0 and the
to compute an initial position, accurate to some kilometers,
measured range rate q_ ðt1Þ at time t1 between the satellite
sufficient to solve the code phase integer ambiguities and
and the receiver. It also depicts the estimated unit vector e
calculate the pseudoranges. For a static or slow-moving
receiver, the instantaneous Doppler equations are:
2 3
dx
6 dy 7
dD ¼ e_i 1 6 7
4 dz 5 þ e ð2Þ
dfd
where dD is the update of the a priori state, i.e., a column
vector with the difference between the predicted Doppler
measurements D ^ and the measured ones D ðdD ¼ D DÞ, ^
i T
e_ is the derivative in time of ei , and [dx dy dz dfd] is the
update of the state vector, which estimates the receiver
position and the frequency drift fd. Doppler and range rate
have inverse signs, i.e., when the satellite is approaching,
and thus the range is diminishing, the Doppler measure-
ment is positive, and thus the frequency is higher: Fig. 2 Satellite range rate variation over time
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where the dot expresses the differentiation in time and The proposed algorithm can solve a timing uncertainty of
dvx; dvy; and dvz express the receiver velocity. When the more than 1 h by just solving the system of equations in (6)
receiver is static or moving slowly, the relative velocity is or (8). However, when the timing uncertainty is higher, the
zero, or close to zero, and therefore the system of equations algorithm will not converge to the right solution, mainly
becomes that in (6). When the receiver velocity needs to be due to the linearization errors of nonlinear equations. In
taken into account, the system of equations is as follows: order to eliminate the need for convergence over long
2 3 periods, we calculate a solution for several initial times and
dx
6 dy 7 choose the solutions with residuals below a given thresh-
6 7 old. A way to implement this method is to split the time
6 dz 7
6 7
i 6 dvx 7 uncertainty interval into subintervals of a given duration,
i
dD ¼ e_ e 1 q€ 6 i 6 7 þ e_ ð8Þ
7 define an initial time t0 associated with each subinterval
6 dvy 7
6 dvz 7 T01, T02, T03, T04, and T05 as per Fig. 5, until the full-time
6 7
4 dfd 5 uncertainty interval is covered and, for each initial time,
dtc run the coarse-time Doppler navigation algorithm, which
will provide, for each interval, a different time solution
where the state vector in (5) is extended to include the T11, T12, T13, T14, and T15, as per Fig. 5. If the method
receiver velocity vx; vy; vz: The derivative e_i of the recei- converges to a plausible solution for a certain interval, the
ver-to-satellite unit vector for a given satellite at position ~
S obtained measurement residuals, in case of an overdeter-
! mined solution, will be below a certain threshold (THR1),
and a receiver at position Rx , with a range q between the
two, can be calculated as follows. The notation has been as T12, T13, and T15 in the figure. We will call this method
slightly modified here to distinguish between magnitudes q ‘‘cold snapshot.’’ The approach followed is similar to that
and vectors ~ q: proposed by Chen et al. (2014), with the difference that,
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1 16.368 4.129945 Danish GPS Centre, March 2, 2010 13:38 80, 10 0.46 5.6, 11.3
Aalborg, Denmark
2 38.192 9.548 University of Boulder, May 7, 2005, 19:10 100, 10 0.46 6.0, 8.2
Colorado, US
3 16.368 4.129945 CTAE, Barcelona, Spain March 25, 2010 15:14 80, 10 0.44 12.3, 35.2
4 16.368 4.129945 Gallecs, Barcelona, Spain June 17, 2010 12:40 80, 10 0.32 6.8, 34,3
5 16.368 4.092 Universidad Autónoma February 12, 2014 15:15 40, 10 0.41 6.4, 11.8
de Barcelona, Spain
L1 C/A has been developed for testing the concept. It is • Initial Time: February 2, 2010, 02:00:00 UTC
partly based on Borre et al. (2007) and Badia-Solé and (28.43 days error)
Iacobescu-Ioan (2010). Five data captures have been • Coarse-Time Doppler Interval: 180 min
processed at different times and locations, as reported in • Elevation Mask: 5
Table 2. All data captures included GPS L1 C/A signals. • Integration Time for Each Solution: 10 ms
The table presents the sampling and intermediate fre- • Coherent Integration Time: 1 ms
quencies, the location and time, the number of snapshots • Non-Coherent Integrations: 10
calculated, and its duration. As results, the table presents • Doppler Solution—Residuals Vector Module Thresh-
the average execution time to solve a one-day time error, old (THR1): 15 m/s.
and the three-dimensional and two-dimensional RMS • Doppler Solution—Maximum Height: 20,000 m (above
errors of the coarse-time range solutions initialized by the WGS84 geoid)
coarse-time Doppler solutions. • Code Solution—Residuals Vector Module Threshold
The average execution time shows that a one-day time (THR2): 100 m
error was solved in less than half a second, using a • Acquisition Method: code phase parallel acquisition
MATLAB non-optimized code in a standard Intel i7- • Acquisition Frequency Bin Step: 500 Hz
3630QM CPU @ 2.4 GHz processor in Windows 8 at 964
The satellite ephemerides for the time uncertainty period
bits. This means that, even before any translation to other
are obtained from RINEX Navigation files (Gurtner 2007).
languages such as C/C?? or any code optimization, the
Signal acquisition is performed coherently for 1 ms with
method can cover periods of days almost instantaneously.
10 non-coherent integrations, for a total of 10 ms. The
Software and hardware optimizations can decrease pro-
signal acquisition method used is based on the non-co-
cessing time to a quick resolution of time uncertainties of
herent code phase parallel acquisition as described in Borre
several weeks, months, or even years, allowing to virtually
et al. (2007). The Doppler and code phase measurements
compute a PVT without any position and time reference.
have been generated in open-loop mode, i.e., without
The final column shows the accuracy of the code phase-
tracking loops. One of the limitations of open-loop posi-
based solution, which is in the order of that of standard
tioning is that, without any additional processing, the code
GPS receivers. All solutions reported as correct were
phase accuracy is limited by the sampling frequency. If
indeed correct, demonstrating the reliability of the method.
parallel code acquisition is performed, the acquisition peak
In the rest of the section, we will report in detail results
will tell the sample with the highest peak, but the actual
based on data capture ID1 (Badia-Solé and Iacobescu-Ioan
code delay will usually be between samples. In order to
2010), which is representative of the ensemble. The sam-
solve this, López-Risueño and Seco-Granados (2004) pro-
ples have been captured with a SiGe SE4110L GPS L1
pose the interpolation between the samples around the
integrated circuit (SiGe 2006). Here are the configuration
peak. In the current implementation, a quadratic interpo-
parameters of the dataset for a one-month time error:
lation has been used. As regards to frequency accuracy,
• True Position: Lat = 57.01473071, Long = 9.9859041, once the code phase measurement has been obtained, the
h = 59.998 m (WGS84) signal can be de-spread to leave only the frequency carrier,
• True Time: March 2, 2010, 12:14:04 UTC and transformed through DFT (discrete Fourier transform)
• Receiver Conditions: static, open-sky into a function of frequency, in which the maximum pro-
• Initial Position (X,Y,Z): (0,0,0) vides the Doppler measurement, with a higher accuracy
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References
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