|Publication number||US8072376 B2|
|Application number||US 12/340,498|
|Publication date||6 Dec 2011|
|Priority date||27 Jun 2008|
|Also published as||DE112009001608T5, US20090322604, WO2009158047A1|
|Publication number||12340498, 340498, US 8072376 B2, US 8072376B2, US-B2-8072376, US8072376 B2, US8072376B2|
|Original Assignee||Sirf Technology Inc.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (54), Referenced by (2), Classifications (8), Legal Events (3)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C §119(e) to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61/076,600, titled “Method and Apparatus for Mitigating the Effects of Cross Correlation in a GPS Receiver,” filed on Jun. 27, 2008, all of which is incorporated into this application by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates in general to satellite navigation systems and in particular to mitigating the effects of cross correlation in Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers.
2. Related Art
Cross correlation between a strong received satellite signal with the C/A (clear/acquisition) code of a weak satellite signal may prevent the weak satellite signal from being acquired/tracked. This problem may occur where the weak satellite signal is blocked by physical obstruction or in an indoor environment where the satellite signal is severely degraded. It is desirable to mitigate cross correlation in order to acquire/track the weak signal.
Past methods of cross correlation mitigation have included the classic post correlation subtraction method or the subspace projection method. The post correlation subtraction method typically relies on computing the cross correlation signature of the weak satellite C/A with a generated signal representing the strong satellite to be mitigated. The generated signal uses the carrier phase, carrier frequency, and code phase obtained from tracking of the strong satellite to estimate the received strong satellite signal. The correlation signature is then scaled by the estimated strong satellite amplitude and subtracted from the correlation of the received signal with the weak satellite C/A code. Alternatively, in the subspace projection method the correlation signature is compared against a threshold and the weak satellite C/A code is modified for received signal correlation so as to reduce the cross correlation of the strong satellite signal with the modified C/A and to enable the weak satellite signal to be acquired/tracked.
However, both the post correlation subtraction method and the subspace projection method suffer from poor mitigation performance in dynamic environments. Correlation signature is sensitive to the amplitude estimate error and phase estimate error of the strong satellite signal. Estimate of the satellite parameters may not be accurate due to Doppler and fading that often occurs in dynamic environments. In the subspace projection method, a different C/A code would have to be derived for each code phase position used in the correlation signature. Integration of the modified C/A code into the correlation with the received signal is also complicated to implement due to the code phase dependency of the correlation signature.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method capable of mitigating the effects of cross correlation in a GPS receiver.
The present invention mitigates cross correlation by generating a strong satellite vehicle (SV) signal and subtracting it from the received signal before correlation. It eliminates the requirement for cross correlation signature and does not change the C/A code. It does require the same accurate estimate of strong signal parameters from tracking the strong SV signal as in the previous post-correlation methods. However, the error sensitivity to amplitude error is reduced by estimating the strong SV amplitude using an amplitude control loop.
Other systems, methods, features and advantages of the invention will be or will become apparent to one with skill in the art upon examination of the following figures and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, features and advantages be included within this description, be within the scope of the invention, and be protected by the accompanying claims.
The invention can be better understood with reference to the following figures. The components in the figures are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon illustrating the principles of the invention. In the figures, like reference numerals designate corresponding parts throughout the different views.
In the following description of the preferred embodiment, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof, and in which is shown by way of illustration a specific embodiment in which the invention may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of this invention.
In the following description of examples of implementations, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof, and which show, by way of illustration, specific implementations of the invention that may be utilized. Other implementations may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention.
The present invention mitigates cross correlation by generating a strong satellite vehicle (SV) signal and subtracting it from a received signal before correlation. It eliminates the requirement for cross correlation signature and does not change the C/A code. It does require the same accurate estimate of strong signal parameters from tracking the strong SV signal as in the previous post-correlation methods. However, the error sensitivity to amplitude error is reduced by estimating the strong SV amplitude using an amplitude control loop.
Described herein are methods and systems for mitigating the cross correlation of a received signal with an SV C/A code in weak signal acquisition/tracking. The cross correlation to be mitigated can be between the received signal from a strong signal SV and the C/A code of a weak signal SV. The method described achieves the mitigation by estimating and subtracting the strong SV signal from the actual received signal and performing the subsequent correlation with the C/A code of the weak signal.
The resulting baseband signal then has the strong SV's reconstructed signal removed by signal combiner 216. The strong SV's signal reconstruction occurs in the strong SV reconstruction module 218 and may have inputs of the amplitude, phase, and data 220 associated with a strong SV's signal. The resulting strong SV's reconstructed signal may then be removed from the resulting signal samples.
The resulting signal samples with the strong SV's signal removed are processed by matched filter 222. The carrier NCO 214 may provide a carrier offset to a carrier/code divider 224 depending on the type of GPS signals being received (GPS, Galileo, etc . . . ). The code generator 226 generates a pseudo-random number (PRN) associated with a weak CDMA signal from one of the SVs. The generated PRN is then used by the match filter 222 to process the resulting signal samples. The matched digital signal samples (I and Q) are stored in the coherent memory 228.
A fast Fourier transform (FFT) may be applied by the FFT module 230 to the matched digital signal samples and the resulting transformed digital signal samples may then have an absolute value function 232 applied. The resulting values are then stored in a non-coherent sample (NCS) memory 234. A peak sort may then be applied with the peaks stored in peak memory or peak RAM 238. The peaks indicate where the strongest matches occurred between the PRN and digital signal samples that have had the strong SV's signals removed.
The strong SV signal reconstruction takes as its inputs the code/carrier phase and data bits 220 from tracking the strong SV signal. The strong SV reconstruction may also require an accurate estimate of the amplitude. Cross correlation is successfully mitigated when the estimated strong satellite signal is an accurate representation of the received signal such that after the subtraction only the weak satellite signal remains to be correlated against the weak satellite C/A code or PRN in the matched filter 222. The resulting signal sample data from the matched filter 222 may then be stored in CS memory 228.
The output of the code NCO 402 may be used to generate the strong SV C/A code with the strong SV PRN module 406. Data modulation on the C/A code is also performed by applying the demodulated data from the strong SV tracking to the C/A code. The strong SV data in
The carrier NCO 404 may take as its inputs the carrier phase and carrier frequency from the strong SV frequency determined by the SV tracking and the carrier offset used for down-converting the received signal path in
The output of the carrier NCO 404 may be further processed by the sin/cos LUT module 408 to generate a complex carrier having both I and Q components that is complex multiplied with the C/A code by complex mixer 410. The sin/cos LUT module 408 functions to create cosine and sine wave signals from the output of carrier NCO 404. The carrier NCO 404 may be a device that essentially creates a numeric sawtooth waveform on its output (e.g. count from 0 to 2N−1, then rollover to 0 again, where N is number of bits in the carrier NCO accumulator). The sin/cos LUT 408 takes numbers from the output of the carrier NCO 404 and translates them from 0 to 2N−1 to 0 to 360° sin and cos waveforms, where the carrier NCO output number may also be used to address the sin/cos LUT module 408. The strong SV amplitude may then be applied to the output of the complex mixer 410 via combiner 412 in order to generate an estimated strong SV signal (Iest, Qest). The estimated strong SV signal (Iest, Qest) may then be subtracted from the received signal.
The input sample memory 210, carrier NCO 214, and complex mixer 212 may be the same as those for generating the baseband signal containing both strong and weak SV signals in
The output of the signal combiner 216 contains the remaining weak satellite signal and is then cross correlated by the single correlator 604 with the strong SV's C/A code or PRN. The output of signal combiner 216, for the purposes of the strong SV amplitude control loop, contains the remnants of the strong SV that has not been suppressed by the cross correlation mitigation operation; in essence, the amplitude control loop operates on the strong SV only. The strong SV signal is suppressed completely via this operation such that a perfect reconstruction of the strong SV signal results. Note that the value Aεt (see
The amplitude control loop depicted in
A carrier-to-noise (C/No) test may be employed to determine initially whether weak SV acquisition/tracking needs strong satellite mitigation. The procedure to mitigate cross correlation first acquires and then tracks the strong SV signals. The code phase, carrier phase/frequency from the strong SV tracking, and the demodulated data bits are obtained by the GPS receiver. They may then be used to aid in the reconstruction of the strong SV signal in two different modules of the GPS receiver. The first is the strong SV reconstruction module that is part of the amplitude control loop to estimate the amplitude of the strong SV signal as described in
The second place for cross correlation mitigation where the code phase, carrier phase/frequency, data, along with the estimated amplitude from the amplitude control loop may be used to generate the strong SV signal for subtraction from the signal path is described in
In other implementations, the strong SV data bits may be obtained with a network connection approach (e.g. cell phone application) or by previous observation of the strong SV's data stream and predicting that they will be similar or predictable in future. Another approach to obtaining the strong SV's data bits may be to observe the first 1 millisecond of the strong SV's 20 msec data bit period and estimating the rest of the data bit from this short segment of each data bit. The incoming weak signal reception may be delayed (in memory) while the strong SV data bit is estimated or just nulled out (zeroed at output of matched filter during weak signal reception where it is known the strong SV data is not known).
The estimated strong SV signal is then subtracted from the baseband signal 708 by signal combiner 216. The resulting baseband signal may be used in a amplitude tracking loop to determine an estimate of the strong SV signal's amplitude 710. The resulting baseband signal may also be used to identify a weak SV's signal using matched filter 222. This process may also be repeated to generate an estimated strong SV signal from multiple SVs with strong signals as described in
Furthermore, the multiple process steps implemented with a programming language, which comprises an ordered listing of executable instructions for implementing logical functions, can be embodied in any machine-readable media for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device, such as a computer-based system, controller-containing system having a processor or controller, such as a microprocessor, digital signal processor, discrete logic circuit functioning as a controller, or other system that can fetch the instructions from the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device and execute the instructions.
While various embodiments of the invention have been described, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that many more embodiments and implementations are possible within the scope of this invention. Moreover, it will be understood that the foregoing description of numerous implementations has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not exhaustive and does not limit the claimed inventions to the precise forms disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above description or may be acquired from practicing the invention. The claims and their equivalents define the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the invention is not to be restricted except in light of the attached claims and their equivalents.
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|U.S. Classification||342/357.63, 342/357.46|
|International Classification||G01S19/24, G01S19/09|
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|2 Mar 2009||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: SIRF TECHNOLOGY, INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:LENNEN, GARY;REEL/FRAME:022332/0723
Effective date: 20090112
|22 Dec 2011||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: CSR TECHNOLOGY INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: CHANGE OF NAME;ASSIGNOR:SIRF TECHNOLOGY, INC.;REEL/FRAME:027437/0324
Effective date: 20101119
|8 Jun 2015||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4