Effects of GNSS receiver tuning on the PLL tracking jitter estimation in the presence of ionospheric scintillation

Guo, K.; Aquino, M.; Vadakke Veettil, S.

Abstract

Ionospheric scintillation is an interference characterized by rapid and random fluctuations in
radio frequency signals when passing through irregularities in the ionosphere. It can severely degrade the
performance of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, thus increasing positioning errors.
Receivers with different tracking loop bandwidths and coherent integration times perform differently under
scintillation. This study investigates the effects of GNSS receiver tracking loop tuning on scintillation
monitoring and Phase Locked Loop (PLL) tracking jitter estimation using simulated GNSS data. The
variation of carrier to noise density ratio (C/N0) under scintillation with different tracking loop settings is
also studied. The results show that receiver tuning has a minor effect on scintillation indices calculation.
The levels of C/N0 are also similar for different PLL bandwidths and integration times. Additionally, the
tracking jitter is estimated by theoretical equations and verified using the relationship with the PLL
discriminator output noise, which is calculated using the post‐correlation measurements. Novel approaches
are further proposed to calculate 1‐s scintillation index, which enables to compute the tracking jitter at
a rate of 1 s. It is found that 1‐s tracking jitter can successfully represent the signal fluctuations levels caused
by scintillation. This work is valuable for developing scintillation sensitive tracking error models and is also
of great significance for GNSS receiver design to mitigate scintillation effects.

Citation

Guo, K., Aquino, M., & Vadakke Veettil, S. (2020). Effects of GNSS receiver tuning on the PLL tracking jitter estimation in the presence of ionospheric scintillation. Space Weather, 18(7), Article e2019SW002362. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019sw002362

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 3, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jun 11, 2020
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jul 10, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 10, 2020
• Journal: Space Weather
• Print ISSN: 1539-4956
• Electronic ISSN: 1542-7390
• Publisher: American Geophysical Union
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 7
• Article Number: e2019SW002362
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019sw002362
• Keywords: ionospheric scintillation; simulation; GNSS receiver performance; PLL tracking jitter
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4646218
• Publisher URL: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019SW002362
• Additional Information: Guo, K., Aquino, M., & Vadakke Veettil, S. (2020). Effects of GNSS receiver tuning on the PLL tracking jitter estimation in the presence of ionospheric scintillation. Space Weather, 18, e2019SW002362. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019SW002362