A Virtual Galileo Constellations (VGC) Approach to Demonstration of GNSS Performance

Yanming Feng

Abstract:	This paper presents an approach to demonstrate the performance benefits of the combined GPS and Galileo systems before Galileo become full operational. Galileo is similar to GPS to users in the sense of the number and geometric distribution of satellites being tracked, measurement types and positioning algorithms. It thus can be generally expected that the navigation performance of Galileo alone would be approximately equivalent to GPS. As far as the performance of the combined GPS and Galileo system concerns, demonstration is often conducted by processing signals from a GPS/Galileo simulator, or data through software-based simulation for dual constellations. Both approaches may not reflect the real world situations, although they do not necessarily mean inexpensive. The proposed approach, called Virtual Galileo Constellation (VGC), allows the performance benefits of the dual GPS/Galileo constellations to be virtually demonstrated by the current GPS constellation. The approach is designed to assess the performance differentiators that the combined constellations can offer when users, such as standalone navigation, code differential positioning, and Real Time Kinematic (RTK) users, operate in the specific spots or areas. Examples include airports, harbours, railway stations, urban street corners and open cut mine sites. Numerical results from single-point positioning (SPP) and RTK case studies have confirmed that the proposed VGC approach is efficient to demonstrate the performance differentiators of the future dual constellations with respect to the existing GPS constellation.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2005 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 24 - 26, 2005 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	819 - 826
Cite this article:	Feng, Yanming, "A Virtual Galileo Constellations (VGC) Approach to Demonstration of GNSS Performance," Proceedings of the 2005 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2005, pp. 819-826.
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