Galileo Performance Improvements Employing Meta-Signals - Robustness Analysis against Payload and Receiver Distortions

Abstract

A concept that has been explored as a means to obtain decimeter-level positioning accuracy with global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) is meta-signal processing (MSP), which treats several stand-alone GNSS signals as a single composite wideband signal. BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) III already offers with the B1I+B1C signal a meta-signal, while the forthcoming Galileo (GAL) E1D could be combined with E1B or E1C if the E1D signal is broadcast with a frequency offset to the L1/E1 carrier frequency. This would boost the ranging performance of GAL open service (OS) in the upper L-band through MSP. However, the cross-correlation function (CCF) of meta-signals contain numerous high side-maxima which can, when wrongly identified as the main peak, lead to significant pseudo-range errors of multiple meters. The probability of such a false lock is known to increase with decreasing signal-to-noise ratios but can significantly increase even further due to imperfections in the analog hardware components (e.g., linear and non-linear effects of a high-power amplifier (HPA), an output multiplexer (OMUX), a transmitter filter, and a front-end receiver), as these can distort the CCF. One remaining question is whether meta-signals are a well-suited approach to reliably increase ranging performance in the presence of payload and receiver distortions. This study presents the first systematic assessment of the robustness of several potential meta-signal options enabled by a forthcoming GAL E1D signal for different levels of distortion. The results show significant performance gains but also indicate constraints regarding the choice of signals when considering MSP under the influence of distortions.