Weak GPS signal tracking using FFT discriminator in open loop receiver

An open loop tracking architecture, which tracks GPS signals under weak and challenging conditions, is analyzed. The in-phase and quadrature-phase integration pair is regarded as a single tone complex signal. An FFT-based method is used as a frequency discriminator to estimate the Doppler frequency residual of the single tone signal. Another FFT-based method applies complex squaring to eliminate the effect of the navigation data bits polarities. The performance of the FFT-based discriminators is assessed in three criteria. Those criteria are the signal strength and dynamic range that can be tracked and the accuracy of the estimated Doppler frequency. In addition, the performance of the discriminators is analyzed to provide the theoretical and simulated peak detection probability. The results indicate that the FFT discriminator can track signals about 5 dB weaker than the signals that can be tracked by the complex squared FFT discriminator. In a quasi-static environment, the Doppler frequency residual can be assumed to be around zero, which can enable the FFT-based discriminators to track signals with approximately 2 dB less power. Moreover, the performance of the FFT-based discriminators is compared with the performance of two other frequency discriminators, namely the fast–slow and power-based. The comparison results indicate that these two frequency discriminators give higher frequency estimation accuracy, but they have a narrower dynamic range.     

Precise orbit determination of BeiDou constellation: method comparison

Chinese BeiDou navigation satellite system is in official service as a regional constellation with five geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellites, five inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit (IGSO) satellites and four medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites. There are mainly two methods for precise orbit determination of the BeiDou constellation found in the current literatures. One is the independent single-system method, where only BeiDou observations are used without help from other GNSS systems. The other is the two-step GPS-assisted method where in the first step, GPS data are used to resolve some common parameters, such as station coordinates, receiver clocks and zenith tropospheric delay parameters, which are then introduced as known quantities in BeiDou processing in the second step. We conduct a thorough performance comparison between the two methods. Observations from the BeiDou experimental tracking stations and the IGS Multi-GNSS Experiment network from January 1 to March 31, 2013, are processed with the Positioning and Navigation Data Analyst (PANDA) software. The results show that for BeiDou IGSO and MEO satellites, the two-step GPS-assisted method outperforms the independent single-system method in both internal orbit overlap precision and external satellite laser ranging validation. For BeiDou GEO satellites, the two methods show close performances. Zenith tropospheric delays estimated from the first method are very close to those estimated from GPS precise point positioning in the second method, with differences of several millimeters. Satellite clock estimates from the two methods show similar performances when assessing the stability of the BeiDou on board clocks.     

A closed-loop EKF and multi-failure diagnosis approach for cooperative GNSS positioning

Current cooperative positioning with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for connected vehicle application mainly uses pseudorange measurements. However, the positioning accuracy offered cannot meet the requirements for lane-level positioning, collision avoidance and future automatic driving, which needs real-time positioning accuracy of better than 0.5 m. Furthermore, there is an apparent lack of research into the integrity issue for these new applications under emerging driverless vehicle applications. In order to overcome those problems, a new extended Kalman filter (EKF) and a multi-failure diagnosis algorithm are developed to process both GNSS pseudorange and carrier phase measurements. We first introduce a new closed-loop EKF with partial ambiguity resolution as feedback to address the low accuracy issue. Then a multi-failure diagnosis algorithm is proposed to improve integrity and reliability. The core of this new algorithm includes using Carrier phase-based Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring method for failure detection, and the double extended w test detectors to identify failure. A cooperative positioning experiment was carried out to validate the proposed method. The results show that the proposed closed-loop EKF can provide highly accurate positioning, and the multi-failure diagnosis method is effective in detecting and identifying failures for both code and carrier phase measurements.     

An Immune Genetic Algorithm to Buildings Displacement in Cartographic Generalization

Spatial conflicts may occur when map data are displayed at a scale smaller than that of the source map. This study applies the displacement operator in cartographic generalization to resolve such spatial conflicts and to improve the clarity and legibility of map. The immune genetic algorithm (IGA) is used in this study for buildings displacement to solve conflicts. IGA is based on the genetic algorithm (GA) and employs the self‐adjusting mechanism of antibody concentration to enhance population diversity. Meanwhile, the elitism retention strategy is adopted in IGA to guarantee that the best individual (antibody) is not lost and destroyed in the next generation to strengthen convergence efficiency. The compared experiment between IGA and GA shows that the displacement result produced by IGA performs better than GA. Finally, in order to make the displaced map more attractive to cartographers, two constraints – the building alignment constraint and building tangent relation constraint – are applied in IGA to restrict the buildings’ displacement. The same experimental data are adopted to prove that the improved IGA is useful for maintaining the two constraints.     

Fourier-based multi-scale representation and progressive transmission of cartographic curves on the internet

ABSTRACT

Automatic generation of multi-scale representations from the same spatial data source has been the research focus in map generalization for a long time. Based on the Fourier technique, this paper proposes a continuous, multi-scale representation model for progressive transformation of cartographic curves on the Internet. In our method, all the curves, whether closed or open, are depicted as periodical functions which are further expressed as Fourier series. The convergence degrees of the Fourier series are explored for different kinds of curves, and truncating frequencies are derived based on the similarity between the original and reconstructed curves. Using information theory and the Radical Law in cartography, the relationship between map scales and Fourier frequencies is established. Based on the proposed multi-scale model, we also introduce the principles and implementation of a progressive transmission method. Our method is evaluated using the contours from a topographic map. The results show that our model is a valid approach to multi-scale representation of cartographic curves.     

Enhanced fault detection and exclusion based on Kalman filter with colored measurement noise and application to RTK

GPS Solutions - The tropospheric delay is an important error source in the Global Positioning System (GPS) positioning and navigation applications. Although most of the tropospheric delays can be...     

国外脆弱性理论模型与评估框架研究评述

目前,脆弱性研究作为一种新的研究范式已经在多学科领域中得到了广泛应用,并取得了丰硕成果.但随着研究的深入,学者们发现,由于学科背景及研究视角的差异性,不同研究领域之间存在着结论不兼容和工作重复等问题,迫切需要一个可行的理论模型与评估框架来整合其理论和实践的研究.在对脆弱性概念内涵的发展演变过程分析的基础上,对国外多学科领域中的脆弱性理论模型及评估框架进行了对比研究和评述.研究发现:脆弱性概念的泛化是制约通用脆弱性理论模型与评估框架的关键因素,结合未来脆弱性研究的发展方向,对整合的脆弱性理论模型与评估框架提出了4个方面的要求,即多时空尺度特征、多重扰动特征、耦合系统特征和人文特征.     

中国北方风蚀区风速变化时空特征分析

利用北方风蚀区155个气象站点1971-2015年平均风速数据,采用气候趋势分析、空间插值和小波分析等方法分析北方风蚀区平均风速的时空变化趋势。结果表明：近45 a来,北方风蚀区年平均风速为2.70 m·s^-1,呈明显减小趋势,其递减速率为0.017 m·s^-1·a^-1（α=0.001）,1980s风速减小最快,1990s减小最缓慢,2010s风速出现增大趋势;我国北方风蚀区四季的平均风速均呈现下降趋势,下降速度春季>夏季>秋季>冬季（α=0.001）,不同年代不同季节风速变化存在较大差异,2010s除春季外其他季节风速均呈现增大趋势;空间分布上显示,风速变化幅度空间分布差异明显,北方风蚀区内的新疆西北部和东南部、青海、内蒙古中部和东北部、黑龙江以及吉林为风速降低较快的区域,甘肃东南部、宁夏、陕西和山西北部以及新疆的东北部和西部等地区是风速降低不明显的区域。春季和夏季风速降低较快的区域面积扩大,冬季和秋季风速降低较缓的区域扩大;平均风速存在多时间尺度的周期性结构特征,28 a时间尺度左右为风速变化的主周期,平均变化周期为18 a。     

西南资源环境信息共享与服务平台原型设计

地理信息共享与GIS互操作是社会化GIS时代地理信息技术发展的必然趋势。本文在简述地理信息共享及GIS互操作理论的基础上，分析了基于Web服务的信息生命周期和OGC提出的OpenGIS服务架构，最后提出了西南资源环境信息共享与服务平台的初步架构。