Development of a Multi-Frequency Adaptive Kalman Filter Based Tracking Loop for an Ionospheric Scintillation Monitoring Receiver

Abstract

This thesis develops a combined GPS L1, L2C and L5 KF based tracking loop by exploiting the dispersive nature of the ionosphere and signal structure of the GPS signals. This results in a robust tracking loop suitable for a scintillation monitoring receiver. It also incorporates an adaptive algorithm that has adaptive bandwidth depending on scintillation level. Performance of combined KF based tracking algorithm compared with that of single frequency KF based tracking algorithm for both adaptive and non-adaptive cases are analysed and compared. A semi-analytic model is used to analyze the effect of scintillation on the tracking loop to perform faster and provide a reliable platform for analyzing the scintillation effects on the receiver performance. Results obtained from simulation data and real data show better performance for the adaptive multifrequency KF based tracking loop than that of the single frequency KF based tracking loop and the non-adaptive KF tracking loop.