A Demonstration of Galileo Transmitter / Receiver Architecture for Space Applications

Paul Blunt, Takuji Ebinuma, Stephen Hodgart and Martin Unwin

Abstract:	Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) have over ten years experience in spaceborne GPS receiver design, applications and research. The completion of GPS modernisation and the introduction of the European GNSS Galileo will breed a new generation of GNSS receivers. These new systems offer many potential advantages over the existing architectures, most notably high bandwidth and dual frequency civil systems. However, this advantage is married with a significant increase in receiver complexity and potential interference between signals and systems. This paper outlines the design and architecture of a Galileo signal generator for use on the Galileo System Test Bed V2/A (GSTB-V2/A) satellite and its application to current GPS/Galileo receiver development activities in Surrey. Emphasis is given to creating Binary Offset Carrier (BOC), Alternate BOC (AltBOC) and Interplexmodulated signals and the impact of BOC signals on acquisition and tracking performance of the receiver. New high bandwidth BOC modulations offer advantages not only in spectral efficiency but also has potential gains in theoretical tracking accuracy and multipath mitigation. However, these additional advantages may be difficult to achieve due to an ambiguity inherent to the BOC signal characteristics. Investigation of the characteristics of BOC signals and corresponding receiver architectures is valuable as it is envisioned that many future GNSS receivers will receive and track signals from both heritage GPS and modern Galileo BOC signals from within the same RF front-end. There are numerous techniques proposed in the literature for unambiguous tracking of BOC signals, each with varying degrees of ambiguity resolution and each with unique implications on receiver performance and complexity. This paper summarises the approach to implementing various techniques within the proposed receiver architecture.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2005) September 13 - 16, 2005 Long Beach Convention Center Long Beach, CA
Pages:	1914 - 1921
Cite this article:	Blunt, Paul, Ebinuma, Takuji, Hodgart, Stephen, Unwin, Martin, "A Demonstration of Galileo Transmitter / Receiver Architecture for Space Applications," Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2005), Long Beach, CA, September 2005, pp. 1914-1921.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In