Optimisation of Galileo GRC Receivers in Ionospheric Scintillation Conditions

Massimo Crisci, Stephane Lannelongue, Herve Guichon, and Nicolas Martin

Abstract:	The Galileo Receiver Chain (GRC) receiver is a critical item of the Galileo Ground Mission System (GMS), in charge of collecting the raw measurements from Galileo satellites, which are used by the Galileo Control Center for Orbitography, Synchronization and Signal-in-Space monitoring (integrity) . GMS performances require a very high availability of GRC measurements. Therefore the ground site conditions are a critical factor for receiver tracking limits and measurement accuracy; in particular the global trade-off between interference and ionospheric scintillation level is to be carefully balanced at GMS level. Starting with stringent and conflicting requirements, this study has led to the definition of acceptable operating points. This resulted from an open and pragmatic approach involving the GMS designer, the receiver manufacturer, and the experts of the GISM scintillation model. Key steps in this definition have been : - the qualitative analysis of the receiver behavior in strong scintillation conditions, pin-pointing critical issues and defining the trade-off space - the refinement of the scintillation model for deep fading characterization - an analysis of the extreme scintillation requirements versus their statistical impact at GMS level - the identification of receiver processing constraints coming from GMS - the generation of statistics of receiver tracking limits using Monte-Carlo simulations - the fitting of a theoretical model based on a queue process, from these limited statistics, to estimate very low probability values unreachable through Monte- Carlo simulation Side issues and possible follow-on research areas are briefly introduced : - physical interpretation of the simple theoretical fading model and possible refinements - extension to user receivers with high dynamics - impact on Safety-of-Life User Receiver standards
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 28 - 30, 2008 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	911 - 922
Cite this article:	Crisci, Massimo, Lannelongue, Stephane, Guichon, Herve, Martin, Nicolas, "Optimisation of Galileo GRC Receivers in Ionospheric Scintillation Conditions," Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2008, pp. 911-922.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In