ABSTRACT.  

It has become hard to imagine a world without Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs). As we increasingly rely on their enabling services, we become equally vulnerable to their threats. These threats can have a huge impact, particularly when the integrity of GNSS is at stake and hazardously misleading information is provided.

In this presentation a kaleidoscopic overview of some of the GNSS integrity challenges and opportunities will be given. It represents samples of fertile grounds for the typical researcher (PhD student, Postdoc or Professor alike) who is eager to take up a difficult challenge and/or looking for research opportunities that can make a difference.

Examples of some of the topics that will be addressed are how to achieve zero-integrity, how to choose between detection and identification, how integrity is affected by distributed processing, how next-generation GNSSs can offer better integrity and how to understand the integrity of integrity.

Speaker Biography

The Institute of Navigation’s (ION) Satellite Division recently presented Professor Peter Teunissen with its Johannes Kepler Award on September 20, 2019 at the ION GNSS+ Conference in Miami, Florida. Prof. Teunissen was recognized for his influential and groundbreaking contributions to the algorithmic foundations of satellite navigation, and for sustained dedication to the global education of the next generation of navigation engineers.

Prof. Teunissen invented the Least Squares Ambiguity Decorrelation Adjustment (LAMBDA) method, the worldwide standard for ambiguity resolution, which revolutionized high precision GNSS positioning capabilities. LAMBDA has thus become an indispensable tool that is most widely used in land, air and space navigation; positioning and attitude determination; differential and network processing; and in surveying and geodesy. He also extended the method to MC-LAMBDA, a multivariate constrained resolution method for optimal GNSS attitude determination.

Among others, Prof. Teunissen laid the mathematical and algorithmic foundation of reliability theory, which enables a proper understanding of the quality of different integer ambiguity resolution methods and a rigorous characterization of their failure rates, which even led to the development of an optimal test for ambiguity validation. His findings are particularly important for multi-GNSS processing, which require a proper understanding of individual system characteristics and their respective contributions to achieve navigation solutions of the highest precision and integrity.

Prof. Teunissen has made contributions in the field of precise point positioning, the exploitation of triple-frequency observation, and the joint use of new GNSSs such as Galileo, BeiDou and QZSS. Pioneering work in this area include the early setup of multi-GNSS receiver test beds in the Asia-Pacific area; the discovery and proper handling of mixed-receiver inter-satellite-type biases, which were vital to fully exploit ambiguity resolution in the regional, BeiDou-2 system; and the first demonstrations of mixed GPS/Galileo/IRNSS/QZSS L5 processing for precise positioning applications.

Prof. Teunissen has made significant contributions to educating future generations. He is currently a Professor of Satellite Navigation at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands and Curtin University, Australia. He received his PhD at Delft University of Technology in Mathematical and Physical Geodesy. He holds several honorary professorships and fellowships of numerous international organizations, including Australia’s prestigious Federation Fellowship of the Australian Research Council. He has published more than 300 papers, seven books, is co-editor and author of the “Handbook of Global Navigation Satellite Systems”, and is a member of 13 editorial boards. He is a regular contributor to ION and ION programs. He is a Fellow of the ION, the RIN and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.

The Johannes Kepler Award recognizes and honors an individual for sustained and significant contributions to the development of satellite navigation. It is the highest honor bestowed by the ION’s Satellite Division.

ABSTRACT.  

Speaker Biography

Curtis Hay is a Technical Fellow at General Motors. In this role Curtis develops precise GNSS and map technology to enable safe and reliable operation of Level 2+ vehicles. Curtis also led the team responsible for launching GM’s 4G LTE connectivity in North America, Europe and China. Prior to joining General Motors, Curtis served as an officer in the US Air Force for eight years where he developed GPS technology for precision weapons, performed satellite launch planning, and managed the GPS Accuracy Improvement Initiative. Curtis also developed precision GPS equipment to automate farm and construction vehicles while at John Deere.

ABSTRACT.  

The European GNSS story is now 15 years old. The EGNOS system has been operational since 8 years, Galileo is on its way to full operational capability to users worldwide. Companies in Europe and worldwide are embarking on the opportunity in many different industries. GNSS upstream and downstream solutions have been adopted by Asian companies and institutions. Asian chip and mobile devices manufacturers are pioneers in adopting Galileo capabilities and are likely to also be leading forces in bringing Galileo innovative services like high precision and authentication to the world market.

Mr Horn will highlight in his presentation how the downstream market is expected to evolve. He will present highlights from GSA’s brand new GNSS market report and how they matter in the Asian multi-GNSS context. He will further outline how GNSS.asia is working with Asia-Pacific innovators, industrial leaders and institutions for them to benefit from Galileo services and industrial solution in Multi-GNSS context.

Speaker Biography

Rainer Horn is Managing Partner of SpaceTec Partners and a member of several institutional boards in space programmes in Europe and Asia. He has long experience in (new)space, space applications and geospatial industry as consultant and investor. Prior to becoming a successful entrepreneur, Rainer led the European space consulting practice at Booz Allen Hamilton. Rainer has studied at ESB in Reutlingen & London and attained an MBA from INSEAD.

Mr Horn has been involved in European GNSS Programmes since 2003 as consultant, expert and start-up investor. His advisory roles included the European Commission’s Mission Evolution Advisory Group (MEAG). He is also on the Steering Committee for Multi-GNSS Asia. Since 2012 Rainer Horn has been leading GNSS.asia, the EU-funded initiative to drive industrial cooperation across continents in the Multi-GNSS environment www.gnss.asia.

The strategy and management consultancy firm SpaceTec Partners covers all areas of space businesses ranging from space programmes, their applications and their impact for life on earth. The firm advises its clients on business strategy, technology strategy, user engagement and international cooperation. SpaceTec Partners has been instrumental in shaping the European innovation ecosystems through the development of space funding programmes, accelerators and incubators. SpaceTec Partners is supporting the European Union’s Space Programmes Galileo and Copernicus on many aspects including industrial cooperation with Asia-Pacific.

ABSTRACT. AUSPOS is Geoscience Australia’s on-line static GPS positioning service, providing worldwide user access to a state-of-art analysis system via a simple web-interface. AUSPOS has become one of the most popular static on-line GPS positioning services based on its solution uncertainties and reliabilities. Recently some changes were made to AUSPOS. In July 2016, international terrestrial reference frame (ITRF) changed from ITRF2008 to ITRF2014. In this change post seismic deformation models were applied to some IGS reference sites impacted by big earthquakes. Accordingly, Bernese GNSS software that AUSPOS relied on was updated to handle the changes. In January 2017, Geocentric Datum of Australia 2020 (GDA2020) derived from a plate motion model and ITRF2014, and AusGeoid2020 for Australian Height Datum (AHD) were released. Since then AUSPOS started to deliver coordinates of ITRF2014, GDA2020 and AHD to Australian users and ITRF2014 coordinates to international users. In this paper we have discussed the changes of reference frame, uncertainty and reliability of AUSPOS solutions.

ABSTRACT. AUSPOS is Geoscience Australia’s free online Global Positioning System (GPS) processing service. It takes advantage of the International GNSS Service (IGS) network station data and products to compute precise coordinates, using static dual-frequency GPS carrier phase and code data of at least 1 hour duration (recommended minimum of 2 hours duration). This paper outlines how AUSPOS and CORSnet-NSW, Australia’s largest state-owned and operated Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) network, are used to support datum modernisation and improve state survey infrastructure across New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The quality of AUSPOS solutions is investigated using more than 2,400 successful datasets incorporating observation sessions ranging from 2 hours to 48 hours in length. It is shown that AUSPOS routinely delivers Positional Uncertainty (PU) values at the 0.02-0.03 m level for the horizontal component and about 0.05-0.06 m for the vertical (ellipsoidal) component. As expected, it is evident that a longer observation span improves PU, particularly in regards to the vertical component. The results illustrate why Geoscience Australia stipulates, and NSW supports, a minimum observation span of 6 hours for inclusion into the national GDA2020 adjustment to propagate the Survey Control Network. However, they also show that shorter observation sessions are of sufficient quality to strengthen and improve the State’s survey infrastructure, justifying the approach taken by NSW Spatial Services to use AUSPOS as one of several suitable methods to maintain and extend the State’s Survey Control Network.

ABSTRACT. Through the Positioning Australia program, Geoscience Australia is establishing the necessary ground infrastructure to track, verify and optimise data for precise positioning information in Australia. To do this we are enhancing and expanding the existing national positioning network to provide greater coverage, greater tracking capabilities and greater reliability. With the network upgrade set to be complete by June 2022; this presentation highlights what we are currently doing now and when the new capabilities will be online.

ABSTRACT. The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) in Victoria continues to maintain a statewide Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Continually Operating Reference Station (CORS) network known as GPSnet. Since its initial establishment in 1996, GPSnet has supported a wide array of applications including geodetic datum maintenance; engineering, construction and cadastral surveying; mining, rail and port operations; precision agriculture; asset management; vegetation mapping and environmental science; and a host of research and development activities.

In recent years, Victoria’s GNSS CORS infrastructure has seen considerable expansion and modernization, both as to GNSS equipment and ICT infrastructure. In line with Geoscience Australia’s Positioning Australia initiative, DELWP is pursuing a number of strategic objectives for the maintenance, operation and enhancement of Victoria’s GNSS CORS infrastructure such that it continues to meet the anticipated growth and demand for precise positioning over the next decade.

This presentation provides an overview of the current status of Victoria’s GNSS CORS infrastructure and DELWP’s on-going initiatives in enabling high-precision across the whole state. Overall, the goal of this presentation is to inform the audience on the importance of positioning infrastructure that contribute to the quality and reliability of high-precision GNSS-based positioning.

ABSTRACT. This presentation will highlight the role of GNSS surveying in the delivery of the Australian Geospatial Reference System (AGRS). GNSS infrastructure and survey observations are essential to the AGRS from datum realisation through to the ongoing maintenance and enhancement of survey control mark networks. Applications of GNSS surveys include routine derivation of accurate coordinate and height information for cadastral and engineering surveys, elevation ground control for airborne LiDAR surveys and AUSGeoid model development, and monitoring ongoing regional subsidence and displacement. The role of GNSS surveying to datum delivery continues to expand, including contributing to modelling deformation to support the time-dependent reference frame, and as the primary mechanism for realising the new Australian Vertical Working Surface (AVWS).

ABSTRACT. Geodesy is no longer an esoteric science; it is the foundation for good decision making. We have undergone a fundamental change in the way people observe, transfer, access and make decisions using spatial data. The users of spatial data are no longer only the specialists from traditional surveying, remote sensing and GIS sectors, but anyone with a mobile phone. The user base also doesn’t want access to coordinates; they just want to know where things have been, where they are now or where they are going. To ensure users can maximise the benefits of precise positioning, we need a accurate and reliable Australian Geospatial Reference System; that is, the datums, infrastructure, standards and software for 4D positioning. Only then can we ensure we have capacity to position ourselves and align our data with accuracy, reliability and integrity. The Australian Geospatial Reference System plays a pivotal role in decision making for sustainable development, economic growth, environmental monitoring, disaster risk reduction and social well-being. This presentation will describe the upgrades being made to the Australian Geospatial Reference System to prepare for, and respond to, emerging issues, changing technology, new user base, real-time positioning with high accuracy and integrity. This includes the world leading development being done on time-dependent reference frames, a more accurate vertical working surface and standards development to ensure users will have fast and easy access to data to make decisions.

ABSTRACT. Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads' (the department) Cooperative and Automated Vehicle Initiative (CAVI) is designed to prepare the department for vehicles with cooperative and automated capabilities on our road network.

This includes testing and trialling cooperative intelligent transport systems technologies (that is, vehicles that ‘talk’ to other vehicles, infrastructure and road operations systems) and a cooperative and highly automated vehicle (that is, one that can operate in automated mode under certain conditions).

The first of four major components of CAVI to be completed will be the Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot. This Pilot will see around 500 vehicles retrofitted with C-ITS technologies, along with signalised intersections and key arterial roads and motorways. The Pilot will commence from late 2019, and as Australia’s largest trial of C-ITS technologies, will allow vehicles, infrastructure, road operations systems, and cloud-based data sharing systems to ‘talk’ to each other in real-time to generate safety-related warnings and messages to the driver. Several use-cases will be tested including emergency electronic brake light warning, stopped or slow vehicle warnings, turning warnings for bicycle riders and pedestrians, red light warning, road works warning, in-vehicle speed warning, back-of-queue warning on motorways, and hazard warnings.

The spatial requirements for the pilot are significant and unusual, however they also represent part of what will become the new normal for transport authorities. This presentation will provide an overview of CAVI and specifically the Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot, the challenges faced in relation to positioning and spatial data, the solutions adopted, and future developments that will help solve these problems.

ABSTRACT. Lane-level positioning is critical for connected vehicles in many of the emerging cooperative safety applications that require sub-meter horizontal positioning accuracy at 10Hz update rate. With the anticipated benefits and demands, new generation high precision GNSS equipment are been introduced at much affordable cost. This project assesses the capabilities of low-cost multi-GNSS dual-frequency GNSS RTK receiver, namely Ublox ZED-F9P module, and Taoglas multiband GNSS antenna in a series of kinematic vehicle tests in South-East Queensland. A professional GNSS-aided inertial navigation system (NovAtel PwrPak7D) was used as the reference solution to evaluate the performances.

Three kinematic vehicle tests were conducted that focused on 1) major arteries, 2) critical and challenging areas and 3) correction via MQTT augment services. Results have shown that 10Hz sub-meter positioning accuracy can be achieved at 95% confidence level. Highly accurate RTK-Fixed solutions can be obtained under reasonable conditions (baseline < 30km, low latency and mild multipath), while the majority of RTK-float solutions offered the required positioning accuracy. It is also demonstrated that correction delivery over MQTT works as well as NTRIP services. However, the lack of clear and reliable positioning accuracy indicator (integrity information) remained as one of the main challenges to be addressed.

ABSTRACT. Most connected vehicle safety and traffic applications depend on high-rate communication and precise position and velocity information to function. Due to the availability of real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS products for mass markets in recent years, the trend has been to use RTK-capable GNSS receiver for vehicle positioning in the field operational tests (FOT), such as in the Queensland Cooperative-Intelligent Transportation Systems-pilot program. However, the performance of RTK positioning solutions could vary from time to time and location to location on roads and streets. There are also losses of communication packages and outages of vehicle positioning outputs that negatively affect safety applications. Therefore, it is essential for the vehicle RTK positioning system to be able to warn the drivers when the system must not be used for intended level of safety user cases under the acceptable probability. Alternatively, drivers must be informed when the probability of collision risk between two closely running vehicles reaches a certain alarm limit. In this work, we first review the accuracy requirements for C-ITR pilot use cases. Next, we discuss the vehicle positioning integrity requirements and vehicle protect-bubble representation, as well as how the VPBs can be used to warn drivers when two VPBs intersects on the roads. Extensive experimental results will show the standard RTK fixed solutions can meet all the requirements for all C-ITS use cases while float RTK solutions can only meet the lane-level safety applications requiring submeter position accuracy and road-level safety applications.

ABSTRACT. Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) techniques have achieved astonishing evolution over the last few decades and are of growing interest to the autonomous driving community. SLAM has advantages over some traditional vehicle positioning and localization techniques since SLAM can support more reliable and robust localization, planning and controlling to meet some key criteria of autonomous driving. However, there are still some issues that adversely affect the behaviour of the classical SLAM techniques for autonomous driving applications. The fundamental properties of SLAM still need to better understood and appropriate quality analysis methods are required so as to improve the performance of SLAM. This study will review SLAM techniques in the context of autonomous driving. First, we give an overview of the different SLAM techniques and then discuss the possible applications of SLAM for autonomous deriving with respect to different driving scenarios, vehicle system parts and the characteristics of the SLAM techniques. We then focus on some challenging issues and potential solutions for the application of SLAM for autonomous driving. We also summarise some quality analysis algorithms that can be used to evaluate the characteristics and performance of SLAM system. Finally, we conclude with remarks on further challenges and future orientation of research.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to demonstrate the possible effects of different types of the urban environment (i.e., highway, urban canyons, suburb, and open-sky areas) on integrity monitoring of a positioning system based on stand-alone Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) solution. In addition to that, capabilities and possible improvements with the addition of a Local Positioning System (LPS) are explored. The effect of the environment is tested on the integration of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) for Weighted Least Squares (WLS) Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) algorithm for GPS data, collected for one vehicle in August of 2018 in Melbourne, Australia. Capabilities of multi-sensor RAIM algorithm will be tested on the collected GPS data, and on simulated ranging data to LPS anchors. The results demonstrate that in areas like suburbs and urban canyons, under conditions of alarm limit of 20 m and integrity risk of 1∙10-5, integrity is not available. On the highway, the integrity is available approximately 73% of the time. With the addition of the LPS data, integrity availability estimates improve in all environments. Integrity in urban canyon and suburban environments becomes available 75% and 80% of the time, respectively. The integrity availability in open-sky areas and highway increases to 100%.

ABSTRACT. A new method to suppress interference sources from within a sparse array is presented. It will deliver orders of magnitude in improvement in signal to noise ratio when operating in a contested environment.

ABSTRACT. Whether using a low-power Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform or a low-cost small satellite, using GNSS as a signal of opportunity for passive radar presents a very cost effective way of performing remote sensing if compared to traditional monostatic radar technologies.

This presentation will give an overview of how super-resolution can be applied in GNSS Reflectometry to retrieve terrestrial features at resolutions superior than conventional correlation-based techniques. Real-world datasets are used to present anecdotal evidence of its superiority. If generalised, this method can have wide-ranging implication to improve both the quality of its output, and to expand its range of application.

ABSTRACT. Sea surface heights (SSHs) are crucial to the application of marine geodesy, and they also can be used to get the information of earth gravity field, ocean currents, tides, and geoid for the purpose of providing research data in oceanography and geophysics. In addition, they are helpful in the economic development, including offshore resource exploration, coastal engineering, marine aquaculture, and so on. Measuring SSHs areas through ship-borne GPS data in coastal won’t be affected by the bad altimeter radar waveforms. Besides, it can measure SSHs linearly and provide wide-range and high resolution observations. Precise point positioning (PPP) technique can be used to determine SSHs without the need for a reference station so it can improve the work efficiency. In this study, ship-borne GPS data is used to calculate ellipsoidal height with PPP technique. The calculations will be corrected through Gaussian filter and the global ocean tide model in order to evaluate the accuracy and precision of SSHs from ship-borne GPS data. CSRS-PPP from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) is be used to process PPP in this study, and its results after correction will be used to evaluate the accuracy and precision of SSHs by means of static tests, crossover difference analysis, and comparison with DTU10 mean sea surface (MSS) model. The static tests shows that the horizontal precision of the calculations from the ship-borne GPS data is about 12.1~15.7 cm, and the vertical precision after tidal correction is about 12.5~14.1 cm. The results of crossover difference analysis show that the values of root mean square after crossover adjustment are about 7.4~14.9 cm, and the results of the comparison with DTU10 MSS suggest that the standard deviation of the differences after crossover adjustment is about 11.9~18.3 cm.

ABSTRACT. This paper studies the detectability of targets on the ocean surface using GNSS signals of opportunity. The proposed approach builds upon proven radar principles to take advantage of the high spatial and temporal sampling and low power/cost advantages provided by GNSS-reflectometry (GNSS-R). The analysis in this study presents 1) a link budget with minimum radar cross-section (RCS) detectable over increasing reflected signal path length; and 2) the effect of coherent integration time on the detectability of the signal. This paper focuses on the backscattering scenario which has been experimentally proven to detect an oil tanker over the ocean. This study further suggests methods to classify a surface target and set up minimum detection parameters based off coherent integration times at increasing altitudes. The results are compared to the only current experimental proof of surface vessel detection by an airborne campaign to highlight potential future use of GNSS-R to detect large surface vessels.

ABSTRACT. GNSS reflectometry is a promising new field of research that utilises reflected GNSS signals off ocean surfaces as a type of bistatic radar. These measurements can then be used to infer ocean state and weather conditions such as wind speed and wind direction, as well as target detection. Normally, a receiver will perform correlation on Intermediate Frequency (IF) data to produce a Delay-Doppler Map (DDM). A way of reconstructing IF data from a DDM is presented to provide a method for future systems to test IF data inputs. The DDM is loaded by C/A code delay sample, creating a frequency domain signal. This is brought into the time domain through MATLAB’s inbuilt IFFT and Hanning window functions. The correct C/A code and carrier are re-modulated to form an IF signal that, when input through a receiver, will produce the same DDM. We have verified this method by using simulated DDMs, and it is currently being used on an ongoing project.

ABSTRACT. The Kea GPS receiver is a flight proven GPS receiver that was designed for space applications such as CubeSats and rockets. Its use of a powerful “system on a chip” containing both an FPGA and embedded processor ensures that the hardware design is capable of being adapted to a variety of new applications. The inherent flexibility of this hardware design has recently been demonstrated in work ACSER UNSW undertook in partnership with DMTC to develop a real-time GPS-Reflectometry remote sensing instrument.

We describe the architecture of our instrument. This includes the decision to split the design into navigating and remote sensing GPS receivers, as well as use of a higher-level ‘System on a Module’ for integration, logging and interfacing functionality. As most of the new work relates to the remote-sensing receiver, the modifications and features of this receiver are emphasised, including the design and implementation of the Delay Doppler Map correlator and the time-synchronisation required for its correct operation. Tests used to validate performance of the instrument are also described.

ABSTRACT. As we move closer to the acquisition of an Australian SBAS solution, a crucial enabler of the forecast economic benefits will be the establishment of a market ecosystem with the ability to supply compatible receiver technology in a timely fashion. In this presentation Thales highlights the key technical and industrial challenges associated with the receiver market, and the actions required to ensure a successful introduction of SBAS into Australia.