The utilization of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is becoming an attractive navigation approach for geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites. A high-sensitivity receiver compatible with Global Position System (GPS) developed by the United States and BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) developed by China has been used in a GEO satellite named TJS-5 to demonstrate feasibility of real-time navigation. According to inflight data, the GNSS signal characteristics including availability, position dilution of precision (PDOP), carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N₀), observations quantity and accuracy are analyzed. The mean number of GPS and GPS + BDS satellites tracked are 7.4 and 11.7 and the mean PDOP of GPS and GPS + BDS are 10.24 and 3.91, respectively. The use of BDS significantly increases the number of available navigation satellites and improves the PDOP. The number of observations with respect to C/N₀ is illustrated in detail. The standard deviation of the pseudorange noises are less than 4 m, and the corresponding carrier phase noises are mostly less than 8 mm. We present the navigation performance using only GPS observations and GPS + BDS observations combination at different weights through comparisons with the precision reference orbits. When GPS combined with BDS observations, the root mean square (RMS) of the single-epoch least square position accuracy can improve from 32.1 m to 16.5 m and the corresponding velocity accuracy can improve from 0.238 m/s to 0.165 m/s. The RMS of real-time orbit determination position accuracy is 5.55 m and the corresponding velocity accuracy is 0.697 mm/s when using GPS and BDS combinations. Especially, the position accuracy in x-axis direction reduced from 7.24 m to 4.09 m when combined GPS with BDS observations.

Through Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) occultation measurement, the global ionosphere and atmosphere can be observed. When the navigation satellites’ signal passes through the lower atmosphere, the rapid change of the atmospheric refractive index gradient will cause serious multipath phenomena in radio wave propagation. Atmospheric doppler frequency shift and amplitude signal fluctuations increase drastically. Due to the attenuation of signal amplitude and the rapid change of the Doppler frequency, the general phase locked loop (PLL) cannot work properly. Hence, a more stable tracking technology is needed to track the occultation signal passing through the lower atmosphere. In this paper, a mountain-top based radio occultation experiment is performed, where we employ an open-loop receiver and remove the navigation bits by the internal demodulation. In the process of the experiment, we adopt the open-loop tracking technique and there is no feedback between the observed signal and the control model. Specifically, taking the pseudo-range and doppler information from models as input, three key parameters, i.e., accurate code phase, carrier doppler and code doppler, can be obtained, and furthermore, the accurate accumulation is determined by them. For the full open-loop occultation data, a closed-loop observation assisted strategy is presented to compare the tracking results between open-loop and closed-loop occultation data. Through the compared results, we can determine whether the initial phase has been reversed or not, and obtain the high consistency corrected open-loop data that can be directly used for subsequent atmospheric parameters inversion. To verify the effect of open-loop tracking and open-loop inversion, we used the company’s self-developed occult receiver system for verification. The company’s self-developed occult receiver system supports Global Position System (GPS)/Beidou satellites constellation (BD, the 2nd and 3rd generations) dual systems. We have verified GPS and BD open-loop tracking and inversion, carried out in a three-week mountain-based experiment. We used closed-loop and open-loop strategies to track and capture the same navigation star to detect its acquisition effect. Finally, we counted the results of a week (we only listed the GPS data; BD’s effect is similar). The experimental results show that the open-loop has expanded the signal-cut-off angle by nearly 20% under the condition of counting all angles, while the open-loop has increased the signal-cut-off angle value by nearly 89% when only calculating the negative angle. Finally, the atmosphere profiles retrieved from observations in open-loop tracking mode are evaluated with the local observations of temperature, humidity and pressure provided by the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, and it is concluded that the error of open-loop tracking method is within ~4% in MSER (mean square error of relative error), which meets the accuracy of its applications (<5%, in MSER).

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) array antenna receivers are widely used to suppress wideband interference in navigation countermeasures. However, existing array antenna receivers all adopt a digital array structure and digital beamforming technique, and they have limited analog-front-end (AFE) dynamic range. In strong interference scenarios, AFE saturation will occur, which limits the maximum interference suppression ability of the array receiver. Aiming at this issue, this paper proposes a robust wideband interference suppression method for GNSS array antenna receivers based on a hybrid beamforming technique. Firstly, a novel, fully connected hybrid array receiver structure is proposed. Secondly, the corresponding hybrid beamforming method is proposed at the same time, and it realizes the complete elimination of the strong wideband interference by joint suppression in the analog domain and digital domain. After mathematical simulations, it is verified that, compared to the digital beamforming-based anti-jamming technique, the proposed method can effectively suppress strong wideband interference, and the maximum interference suppression ability is improved by 36 dB.

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) array antenna receivers are widely used to suppress wideband interference in navigation countermeasures. However, existing array antenna receivers all adopt digital array structure and digital beamforming technique, and it has limited analog-front-end (AFE) dynamic range. In strong interference scenarios, AFE saturation will occur, which limits the maximum interference suppression ability of the array receiver. Aiming at this issue, this paper proposes a robust wideband interference suppression method for GNSS array antenna receivers based on hybrid beamforming technique. Firstly, a novel fully connected hybrid array receiver structure is proposed; Secondly, the corresponding hybrid beamforming method is proposed at the same time, and it realizes the complete elimination of strong interference by jointly suppression in analog domain and digital domain. After mathematical simulation experiments, it is verified that compared to the digital beamforming-based anti-jamming technique, the proposed method can effectively suppress strong wideband interference, and the maximum interference suppression ability is improved by 36 dB.