Blind Receiver for LEO Beacon Estimation with Application to UAV Carrier Phase Differential Navigation

Sharbel E. Kozhaya and Zaher M. Kassas

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	A receiver for blind beacon estimation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite signals with application to UAV navigation is presented. The receiver operates in three stages: (i) blind Doppler tracking that uses correlation in the frequency-domain as a frequency discriminator and tracks the Doppler using a frequency-locked loop (FLL), (ii) beacon estimation from the coherent accumulation of the received signal after wiping off the Doppler tracked by the FLL, and (iii) tracking LEO signals using the estimated beacon in the previous step to produce navigation observables. Experimental results are presented showing: (i) successful blind estimation of the navigation beacon of the Orbcomm LEO constellation and (ii) a UAV navigating using the estimated beacons of two Orbcomm LEO satellites via a carrier phase differential navigation framework, achieving a three-dimensional position root mean-squared error (RMSE) of 13.9 m with only Orbcomm signals fused with an altimeter, over a trajectory of 2.28 km traversed in 2 minutes.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 35th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2022) September 19 - 23, 2022 Hyatt Regency Denver Denver, Colorado
Pages:	2385 - 2397
Cite this article:	Kozhaya, Sharbel E., Kassas, Zaher M., "Blind Receiver for LEO Beacon Estimation with Application to UAV Carrier Phase Differential Navigation," Proceedings of the 35th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2022), Denver, Colorado, September 2022, pp. 2385-2397. https://doi.org/10.33012/2022.18582
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