Improvements in Error Rate in Eurofix Communications Data Link via Cross Rate Canceling and Antenna Beam Steering

Benjamin B. Peterson, Arthur Helwig and Gerard Offermans

Abstract:	The Eurofix system for providing differential GPS corrections has been successfully on-air broadcasting from the Loran-C transmitter at Sylt since February 1997. There are other potential uses of this information bandwidth such as differential GLONASS, emergency control of the LORAN system upon loss of land line communications, differential LORAN corrections, secondary transmitter offsets from UTC assuming the System Area Monitor concept is retained in the US for legacy users, and Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) type data for aviation use. This paper will first present recent results on transmission of DGLONASS and DGPS data via the Chayka transmitter near Bryansk, Russia and plans to expand Eurofix transmissions to three other Northwest European Loran-C System (NELS) transmitters later this year. It will then discuss the basic properties of pulse position demodulation in the presence of noise and cross rate interference. It will address the limiting signal to noise ratio (SNR) to allow for successful data transmission. It will evaluate techniques such as cross rate canceling and antenna beam steering to see if they can significantly reduce raw bit error rates and allow for the greater information bandwidth likely to be required for these potential uses. It will present a near maximum likelihood decoder structure that utilizes analog measures of individual pulse reliabilities, and new receiver structures Finally, the architecture of a Coast Guard Academy receiver test bed and the results of some preliminary testing are presented.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1999) June 27 - 30, 1999 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	79 - 88
Cite this article:	Peterson, Benjamin B., Helwig, Arthur, Offermans, Gerard, "Improvements in Error Rate in Eurofix Communications Data Link via Cross Rate Canceling and Antenna Beam Steering," Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1999), Cambridge, MA, June 1999, pp. 79-88.
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