Tracking GPS Signals Under Ionosphere Scintillation Conditions

L. Zhang, Y.T. Morton

Abstract:	GPS signals propagating through regions of the ionosphere having irregular plasma structure may experience ionosphere scintillation. Ionosphere scintillation is characterized by random fluctuations of signal amplitude and carrier phase. These signal parameter fluctuations result in increased receiver tracking loop error and under strong scintillation conditions, may lead to receiver loss of lock. This paper presents three carrier tracking loop implementations: the conventional PLL, a FLL-assisted PLL, and a Kalman filter-based PLL. Simulated GPS signals with a wide range of scintillation levels are used to evaluate the performances of these tracking loop implementations. Detailed tracking loop design parameters such as loop bandwidth and discriminator design are also evaluated for performance comparisons. Our simulation results show that all three methods exhibit similar tracking loop errors under all evaluation testing conditions. The Kalman filter-based tracking loop has the most robust performance in terms of minimum loss of lock and cycle slips.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009) September 22 - 25, 2009 Savannah International Convention Center Savannah, GA
Pages:	227 - 234
Cite this article:	Zhang, L., Morton, Y.T., "Tracking GPS Signals Under Ionosphere Scintillation Conditions," Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009), Savannah, GA, September 2009, pp. 227-234.
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