Thesis (M. S. in Electrical Engineering)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2004. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Background and advantages of GPS based Remote Sensing are introduced, characteristics of forward scattered GPS signal such as polarization change, cross-correlation power variation, code delay due to the wave travel distance difference between direct and scattered signal, and cross-correlation power expansion due to sea surface roughness are discussed in detail. Working principle of the self-developed delay-mapping receiver is also presented. First data collection campaign is done at Inshore of BOHAI ocean with the delay-mapping receiver mounted on an airplane. Results show that the reflected signals has much variation than the direct signals, the code delay of the reflected signals varies as the receiver height and satellite elevation angle changes and expansion of the cross-correlation due to the wind driven surface was also demonstrated.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-204).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-86)

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-86)

The primary aim of this research is to develop and assess the innovative methods and techniques which are used to augment GPS using a variety of digital spatial data. It is well known that the use of GPS can be severely compromised by various error sources such as signal obstructions, multipath and poor satellite geometry etc., especially in highly built-up areas. In order to improve the accuracy and reliability of GPS, complementary data is often combined with GPS data for enhancing the performance of a standalone GPS receiver. Spatial data is one type of complementary data that can be used to augment GPS. However, the potential of using various types of existing and newly acquired spatial data for enhancing GPS performance has not been fully realised. This is particularly true due to the fact that higher accuracy digital surface models (DSMs), which include buildings and vegetation, and digital maps, have only been made widely available in recent years. This thesis will report on a number of experiments that used spatial data of various complexity and accuracy for enhancing GPS performance. These experiments include height aiding with different scale digital terrain models (DTMs); map-matching using odometer data, DTM and road centrelines; modelling and prediction of GPS satellite visibility using DSMs; and prediction of GPS multipath effect using DSMs and building footprints. These experiments are closely related to each other in the sense that GPS and spatial data are combined to provide value-added information for improved modelling and prediction of GPS positioning accuracy and reliability, for applications such as transport navigation and tracking ... Extensive fieldwork has been carried out to verify the developed techniques and methods. The results show that the accuracy of a standalone GPS receiver can be improved by height aiding using a higher resolution DTM and map-matching especially when the satellite geometry is poor. The mean error of single receiver GPS positioning for one particular dataset, on which the described map-matching algorithm was developed, is 8.8m compared with 53.7m for GPS alone. This work was carried out in collaboration with London Transport. In terms of satellite visibility analysis, the results obtained from the fieldwork indicate that greater modelling accuracy has been achieved when using higher resolution DSMs. Furthermore, a ray tracing model was implemented in a 3D GIS environment in order to model reflected and diffracted GPS signals. The Double Differencing (DD) residuals were used to give an indication of the magnitude of the possible pseudorange multipath error caused by diffraction. A single-knife diffraction model was first implemented on 1m Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) DSMs, and verified by post-processing (i.e. large DD residuals occurred when the satellites are partially masked and unmasked by buildings), which indicate that GPS multipath prediction with LiDAR data and building footprints is feasible, and has the potential to offer greater modelling accuracy.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / Hardware architecture and design details of a multi-channel GPS signal simulator with highly flexibility is presented, while the dynamic performance objectives and the requirements on the hardware architecture are discussed. The IF part of the simulator is implemented almost entirely in the digital domain by use of a field programmable gate array (FPGA), which mainly include C/A code generators, carrier generators, spreaders, and BPSK modulators. The results of testing the proposed simulator hardware architecture at IF with the help of a GPS receiver are presented.

The integrity of positioning systems has become an increasingly important requirement for location-based Intelligent Transports Systems (ITS). The navigation systems, such as Global Positioning System (GPS), used in ITS cannot provide the high quality positioning information required by most services, due to the various type of errors from GPS sensor, such as signal outage, and atmospheric effects, all of which are difficult to measure, or from the map matching process. Consequently, an error in the positioning information or map matching process may lead to inaccurate determination of a vehicle’s location. Thus, the integrity is require when measuring both vehicle’s positioning and other related information such as speed, to locate the vehicle in the correct road segment, and avoid errors. The integrity algorithm for the navigation system should include a guarantee that the systems do not produce misleading or faulty information; as this may lead to a significant error arising in the ITS services. Hence, to achieve the integrity requirement a navigation system should have a robust mechanism, to notify the user of any potential errors in the navigation information. The main aim of this research is to develop a robust and reliable mechanism to support the positioning requirement of ITS services. This can be achieved by developing a high integrity GPS monitoring algorithm with the consideration of speed, based on the concept of context-awareness which can be applied with real time ITS services to adapt changes in the integrity status of the navigation system. Context-aware architecture is designed to collect contextual information about the vehicle, including location, speed and heading, reasoning about its integrity and reactions based on the information acquired. In this research, three phases of integrity checks are developed. These are, (i) positioning integrity, (ii) speed integrity, and (iii) map matching integrity. Each phase uses different techniques to examine the consistency of the GPS information. A receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) algorithm is used to measure the quality of the GPS positioning data. GPS Doppler information is used to check the integrity of vehicle’s speed, adding a new layer of integrity and improving the performance of the map matching process. The final phase in the integrity algorithm is intended to verify the integrity of the map matching process. In this phase, fuzzy logic is also used to measure the integrity level, which guarantees the validity and integrity of the map matching results. This algorithm is implemented successfully, examined using real field data. In addition, a true reference vehicle is used to determine the reliability and validity of the output. The results show that the new integrity algorithm has the capability to support a various types of location-based ITS services.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is being used as a sensor in telemetry systems to provide time, space and position information (TSPI) as well as end game or vector scoring. The accuracy of these measurements depends on precisely locating the phase center of the GPS antenna. A procedure has not currently been addressed by anyone to measure the phase center of a conformal wrap-around GPS antenna. This paper will discuss some techniques on determining the antenna phase center.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / The Joint Advanced Missile Instrumentation (JAMI) program is integrating Global Positioning System (GPS) technology into missile telemetry systems. The weakest link appears to be the GPS antenna. The antenna on a missile is required to be flush mounted for aerodynamic reasons. Due to the missile’s tendency to roll, the antenna needs to be a multi-element omnidirectional antenna array. Therefore an antenna used on missiles is a wrap-around antenna since it will meet the flush mount and rolling requirements by giving omnidirectional coverage. JAMI has used readily available techniques for designing wrap-around telemetry antennas to develop a GPS wrap-around antenna and has discovered a major problem. The Phase Center of a wrap-around antenna tends to be a surface, not a point, and not necessarily at the centerline of the missile body. GPS measurements have been conducted to determine the Phase Center of the antenna. When the Phase Center is large, the GPS receiver perceives it as multipath and integer ambiguities cannot be resolved. This paper addresses the problems that have been uncovered and outlines the steps that are planned to resolve them.