This paper develops novel Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference detection methods based on the Hough transform. These methods are realized by incorporating the Hough transform into three Time-Frequency distributions: Wigner–Ville distribution, pseudo -Wigner–Ville distribution and smoothed pseudo-Wigner–Ville distribution. This process results in the corresponding Wigner–Hough transform, pseudo-Wigner–Hough transform and smoothed pseudo-Wigner–Hough transform, which are used in GNSS interference detection to search for local Hough-transformed energy peak in a small limited area within the parameter space. The developed GNSS interference detection methods incorporate a novel concept of zero Hough-transformed energy distribution percentage to analyze the properties of energy concentration and cross-term suppression. The methods are tested with real GPS L1-C/A data collected in the presence of sweep interference. The test results show that the developed methods can deal with the cross-term problem with improved interference detection performance. In particular, the GNSS interference detection performance obtained with the smoothed pseudo-Wigner–Hough transform method is at least double that of the Wigner–Hough transform-based approach; the smoothed pseudo-Wigner–Hough transform-based GNSS interference detection method is improved at least 20% over the pseudo-Wigner–Hough transform-based technique in terms of the zero Hough-transformed energy percentage criteria. Therefore, the proposed smoothed pseudo-Wigner–Hough transform-based method is recommended in the interference detection for GNSS receivers, particularly in challenging electromagnetic environments.

With the increasing use of high data rate navigation signals, the detection performance is severely affected by sign transition. An acquisition method based on multiple correlation strategies fusion (MCSF) has been proposed to reduce the correlation loss caused by the sign transition. The detection performances of non‐coherent (NCH) method, zero‐padding (ZP) method and MCSF in the presence of sign transition have been analysed. The theoretical and simulation results show that the proposed method can provide 1–3 dB acquisition sensitivity improvement compared with the NCH and ZP methods, and reduce the mean acquisition time by 21.3 and 8.5%, respectively. Moreover, the real data from GPS L5 and BeiDou Navigation Satellite System B2I have been used to analyse the performance.

High-precision systems such as civil aviation have put forward higher requirements for navigation systems, including indicators such as accuracy and integrity. Signal distortions and evil waveforms (EWF) generated by the signal-generating hardware on the satellite can severely affect the cross-correlation function of the signal, thereby affecting the integrity of the navigation system. With the further development of the BeiDou Navigation System (BDS), the types of signal distortion are subdivided into three types: analog distortion, subcarrier distortion, and PN code distortion. Traditional multi-correlator methods are no longer applicable under the requirements of modern navigation systems. In this paper, a machine learning-based BeiDou B1C signal anomaly monitoring algorithm is proposed. We detected and classified the signals using a quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) method. The results show that our method can accurately classify the distortion types under the condition that the accuracy of distortion detection can be greatly improved. Meanwhile, our method is also highly effective and robust.

Integer Aperture Bootstrapping (IAB) is a crucial method for testing ambiguity acceptance in carrier-phase differential global navigation satellite system (CDGNSS) positioning. It has the advantage that integrity parameters, such as the failure rate, can be analytically calculated, which is essential in safety-of-life applications. Although the IAB methods have been extensively studied, their threshold-determining method is still not well explained, theoretically. In this study, a new method, named Analytical Integer Aperture Bootstrapping (AIAB), is theoretically derived to determine the optimal IAB threshold. AIAB is novel in that: (1) a precise and easy-to-compute expression has been developed to describe the relationship between the IAB threshold and the failure rate, (2) an analytical function model has been derived from the expression to determine the IAB threshold; moreover, the function model is simplified, and (3) a data-constraint approach has been proposed to reduce the complexity of IAB. In the global CDGNSS simulations, AIAB is shown to outperform the existing IAB methods under both strong and weak models, particularly at low fix rates, which are 23% to 40% higher than the basic IAB method. The Monte Carlo simulation results show that AIAB can obtain almost theoretically the same performance as Optimal Integer Aperture (OIA).