A Novel Pre-Processing Scheme to Enhance GNSS Signal Detection in the Presence of Blanking

Abstract

In air navigation, the rotation of aircraft results in the discontinuous tracking of GNSS signals. As the platform rotates, the GNSS signals are subject to blanking effects. To solve this problem, a ring-type antenna array is used to prevent signal discontinuity and a hypothesis-test based detection scheme is developed so that the correct antenna combination can be formed to provide uninterrupted reception of GNSS signals in the presence of blanking, noise, and interferences. A fixed threshold detection scheme is first developed by assuming that the statistics of the noise are known. It is shown that the scheme is capable of differentiating signal from noise at each antenna element. To account for the interference effect, a multiple hypothesis test scheme, together with an adaptive selection rule, is further developed. Through this detection and selection process, it is shown, through simulations, that the desired GNSS signals can be extracted and successfully tracked in the presence of blanking and co-channel interference.