Extending the Applications and Improving the Efficiency of Positioning Through the Exploitation of New GNSS Signals

在过去的三十年里，美国GPS（全球定位系统）已经从一个为军事应用提供米级定位的系统发展到一个用于各种不可预见的，主要是民用的应用。这一发展受到基础研究的推动和支持，包括在英国大学进行的研究，特别是在误差建模、接收机设计和传感器集成领域。然而，全球定位系统及其目前的增强仍然不能满足日益增长的更高性能的要求。例如，许多城市地区的覆盖率不足，对于某些工程应用（如铺设路面）来说不够准确，接收器无法可靠地接收室内信号。然而，情况正在迅速变化。在未来几年中，目前的GNSS（全球卫星导航系统）计划演变成新的和增强的形式。现代化的GPS和GLONASS（俄罗斯的GPS）将带来新的信号，以补充我们过去30年来一直使用的GPS信号。我们还将看到新的全球导航卫星系统的逐步部署，包括欧洲的伽利略系统和中国的北斗系统，从而导致到2013年左右，目前可用的卫星数量至少增加两倍--所有这些卫星的信号都与目前使用的信号有很大不同，而且比目前使用的信号更复杂。这些新信号有可能将全球导航卫星系统的应用扩展到GPS无法单独满足的领域。它们还将使新的定位概念的发明成为可能，这些概念将大大提高当今许多应用的定位效率，并刺激新的应用，特别是那些将与预期的第四代通信网络一起开发的应用，以提供对包括公海在内的整个世界的经济发展至关重要的基于位置的服务。该提案旨在开展一些具体的研究方面，这些研究是利用新信号和实现这些新应用所必需的。其中包括与设计新的全球导航卫星系统传感器、为提高定位精度而对各种数据误差源进行建模以及全球导航卫星系统相互之间以及与惯性传感器、eLORAN导航系统以及各种伪卫星和超宽带无线电系统等其他定位相关输入的集成有关的问题。我们还在寻求新的方法来衡量集成系统的质量，以便我们能够现实地评估它们对特定用途的适用性（特别是对安全关键和法律关键应用）。作为我们工作的一部分，我们将建立一个评估平台，以测试我们的想法并验证我们的发现。（在所有条件和环境下的无缝定位）项目，这是一个成功的EPRSC资助的研究合作框架，汇集了英国领先的学术GNSS研究中心，与该领域许多最重要的工业组织和用户机构合作。该项目为建立一个有效的、长期的虚拟学术团队奠定了基础，并提供了一个有效的界面，以获取行业的需求和经验。这里提出的研究将在一个新的合作框架（基于SPACE）内进行，该框架涉及四所大学（伦敦大学学院、帝国理工学院、诺丁汉和威斯敏斯特）和九个工业合作伙伴（埃兹集团、奥瑞康调查公司、徕卡地理系统公司、航空半导体公司、意法半导体公司、泰雷兹研究和技术公司、奇奈蒂克公司、民航局和NSL）。工业合作伙伴已承诺提供近200万美元的实物支持，而由其中一个工业合作伙伴领导的拟议管理结构经过精心设计，旨在促进合作，并以最有效的方式利用我们的综合设施和资源。

Over the past three decades the US GPS (Global Positioning System) has evolved from a system designed to provide metre-level positioning for military applications to one that is used for a diverse range of unforeseen, and mainly civilian, applications. This evolution has been both driven and underpinned by fundamental research, including that carried out at UK universities, especially in the fields of error modeling, receiver design and sensor integration. However, GPS and its current augmentations still cannot satisfy the ever increasing demands for higher performance. For instance there is insufficient coverage in many urban areas, it is not accurate enough for some engineering applications such as the laying of road pavements and receivers cannot reliably access signals indoors.However things are changing rapidly. Over the next few years the current GNSSs (Global Satellite Navigation Systems) are scheduled to evolve into new and enhanced forms. Modernised GPS and GLONASS (Russia's equivalent to GPS) will bring new signals to complement those that we have been using from GPS for the last 30 years. Also we will see the gradual deployment of new GNSSs including Europe's Galileo and China's Compass systems, so leading to at least a tripling of the number of satellite available today by about 2013 - all with signals significantly different from, and more sophisticated than, those used today.These new signals have the potential to extend the applications of GNSS into those areas that GPS alone cannot satisfy. They will also enable the invention of new positioning concepts that will significantly increase the efficiency of positioning for many of today's applications and stimulate new ones, especially those that will develop in conjunction with the anticipated fourth generation communication networks to provide the location based services that will be essential for economic development across the whole world, including the open oceans. This proposal seeks to undertake a number of specific aspects of the research that is necessary to exploit the new signals and to enable these new applications. They include those related to the design of new GNSS sensors, the modeling of various data error sources to improve positioning accuracy, and the integration of GNSSs with each other and with other positioning-related inputs such as inertial sensors, the eLORAN navigation system, and a wide rage of pseudolite and ultra-wide band radio systems. We are also seeking to find new ways to measure the quality of integrated systems so that we can realistically assess their fitness for specific purposes (especially for safety-critical and legally-critical applications). As part of our work we will build an evaluation platform to test our ideas and validate our discoveries.The proposal builds on the unique legacy of the SPACE (Seamless Positioning in All Conditions and Environments) project, which was a successful EPRSC-funded research collaboration framework that brought together the leading academic GNSS research centres in the UK, with many of the most important industrial organisations and user agencies in the field. The project laid the foundation for an effective, long-term virtual academic team with an efficient interface to access industry's needs and experience. The research proposed here will be carried out within a new collaboration framework (based on SPACE) involving four universities (UCL, Imperial, Nottingham and Westminster) and nine industrial partners (EADS Astrium, Ordnance Survey, Leica Geosystems, Air Semiconductors, ST Microsystems, Thales Research and Technology, QinetiQ, Civil Aviation Authority and NSL). The industrial partners have pledged almost 2M of in-kind support and the proposed management structure, led by one of the industrial partners, is carefully designed to foster collaboration and to bring to bear our combined facilities and resources in the most effective manner.