Use of a GNSS Digital Beamforming Platform for an Assisted Berthing System

Alessandro Neri, Federica Pascucci, Michele Brizzi, Francesco Rispoli, Agostino Ruggeri, and Cosimo Cervicato

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The COVID pandemic in 2020 caused an unpredictable disruption to maritime transportation, affecting the smooth operating of the global supply chains. To make this transport sector more resilient a key enabling factor is the introduction of novel smart systems both on port and ship side. This contribution addresses this topic. Specifically, it introduces a GNSS Digital Beamforming Platform (DBP) for an Assisted Berthing System that exploits satellite signals to support officers during docking and undocking manoeuvre. In addition to Position, Velocity and Timing (PVT), the DBP provides a direct estimate of the ship attitude. In fact, in addition to PVT, attitude plays an important role in innovative digital systems for navigation in port waters and for the assisted berthing operations of large cargo RORO Ships. In addition to PVT and Attitude estimation, the proposed DBF offers high resilience against jammers and miconing and spoofing attacks. In this paper we focus our attention on the use of a four array elements, fully coherent DBP for estimation of heading, pitch, and roll and on the evaluation of the achievable performance. Knowledge of the array geometry is fully exploited by means of a constrained least square estimation procedure. Integrity evaluation in terms of protection levels with reference to the estimated distance to the quay side. DBP Performance assessed by means of tests performed with a DBP Proof of Concept and by means of simulations is reported.
Published in:	Proceedings of the ION 2024 Pacific PNT Meeting April 15 - 18, 2024 Hilton Waikiki Beach Honolulu, Hawaii
Pages:	417 - 429
Cite this article:	Neri, Alessandro, Pascucci, Federica, Brizzi, Michele, Rispoli, Francesco, Ruggeri, Agostino, Cervicato, Cosimo, "Use of a GNSS Digital Beamforming Platform for an Assisted Berthing System," Proceedings of the ION 2024 Pacific PNT Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, April 2024, pp. 417-429. https://doi.org/10.33012/2024.19655
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