For radio-based time-of-arrival (TOA) positioning systems applied in harsh environments, obstacles in the surroundings and on the vehicle itself will block the signals from the anchors, reduce the number of available TOA measurements and thus degrade the localization performance. Conventional multi-antenna positioning technique requires a good initialization to avoid local minima, and suffers from location ambiguity due to insufficient number of TOA measurements and/or poor geometry of anchors at a single epoch. In this paper, taking advantage of the multi-epoch and multi-antenna (MEMA) TOA measurements bridged by inter-epoch constraints to utilize more information and improve the geometry of visible anchors, we propose a new positioning method, namely MEMA-TOA method. A new initialization method based on semidefinite programming (SDP), namely MEMA-SDP, is first designed to address the initialization problem of the MEMA-TOA method. Then, an iterative refinement step is developed to obtain the optimal positioning result based on the MEMA-SDP initialization. We derive the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) to analyze the accuracy of the new MEMA-TOA method theoretically, and show its superior positioning performance over the conventional single-epoch and multi-antenna (SEMA) localization method. Simulation results in harsh environments demonstrate that i) the new MEMA-SDP provides an initial estimation that is close to the real location, and empirically guarantees the global optimality of the final refined positioning solution, and ii) compared with the conventional SEMA method, the new MEMA-TOA method has higher positioning accuracy without location ambiguity, consistent with the theoretical analysis.

The estimation of the direction of arrival (DOA) of navigation signals is a critical function of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) array receiver when used for applications such as attitude determination, spoofing detection, and blind adaptive beamforming. However, the presence of high-power GNSS jamming poses significant challenges to accurate DOA estimation. In this paper, we present spatial whitening and normalized multiple signal classification (SWN-MUSIC), an enhanced two-stage MUSIC algorithm for DOA estimation of GNSS signals under jamming. In the first stage, inspired by minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamforming, we employ a spatial whitening matrix for matrix filtering to achieve jamming suppression. In the second stage of the two-stage algorithm, an approach is proposed to account for the effect of matrix filtering when computing the MUSIC pseudospectrum. Compared to previous works on GNSS DOA estimation under jamming, our SWN-MUSIC algorithm exhibits improved accuracy, particularly in challenging scenarios where the DOA of jamming and signals are closely aligned. Additionally, we develop the reduced-dimension SWN-MUSIC (RD-SWN-MUSIC) algorithm to reduce the complexity of applying SWN-MUSIC for two-dimensional DOA estimation using uniform rectangular arrays (URA) under jamming. Compared to standard reduced-dimension MUSIC techniques, in the new RD-SWN-MUSIC, we not only successfully apply dimension-reduced parameter estimation to the more complex pseudospectrum form of SWN-MUSIC, but also avoid unnecessary precision loss by implementing a strategy that conducts separate one-dimensional parameter searches for each DOA parameter. Presented results of numerical simulations in jamming scenarios indicate that the performance of the proposed RD-SWN-MUSIC algorithm closely approaches the corresponding Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB). The complexity of the algorithm is significantly lower when compared to the classical MUSIC and its previously proposed versions.

As the modern navigation business evolves, demands for high-precision positioning in GNSS-challenged environments increase, and the integrated system composed of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based Real-Time Kinematic (RTK), inertial system (INS), Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), etc., is accepted as the most feasible solution to the issue. For prior-map-free situations, as the only sensor with a global frame, RTK determines and maintains the global positioning precision of the integrated system. However, RTK performance degrades greatly in GNSS-challenged environments, and most of the existing integrated systems adopt loose coupling mode, which does nothing to improve RTK and, thus, prevents integrated systems from further improvement. Aiming at improving RTK performance in the RTK/LiDAR/INS integrated system, we proposed an innovative integrated algorithm that utilizes RTK to register LiDAR features while integrating the pre-registered LiDAR features to RTK and adopts parallel filters in the ambiguity-position-joint domain to weaken the effects of low satellite availability, cycle slips, and multipath. By doing so, we can improve the RTK fix rate and stability in GNSS-challenged environments. The results of the theoretical analyses, simulation experiments, and a road test proved that the proposed method improved RTK performance in GNSS-challenged environments and, thus, guaranteed the global positioning precision of the whole system.

In a time-division broadcast positioning system (TDBPS), localizing mobile targets using classical time difference of arrival (TDOA) methods poses significant challenges. Concurrent TDOA measurements are infeasible because targets receive signals from different anchors and extract their transmission times at different reception times, as well as at varying positions. Traditional TDOA estimation schemes implicitly assume that the target remains stationary during the measurement period, which is impractical for mobile targets exhibiting high dynamics. Existing methods for mobile target localization are mostly specialized and rely on motion modeling and do not rely on the concurrent TDOA measurements. This issue limits their direct use of the well-established classical TDOA-based localization methods and complicating the entire localization process. In this article, to obtain concurrent TDOA estimates at any instant out of the sequential measurements for direct use of existing TDOA-based localization methods, we propose a novel TDOA estimation method, termed parameterized TDOA (P-TDOA). By approximating the time-varying TDOA as a polynomial function over a short period, we transform the TDOA estimation problem into a model parameter estimation problem and derive the desired TDOA estimates thereafter. Theoretical analysis shows that, under certain conditions, the proposed P-TDOA method closely approaches the Cramér–Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) for TDOA estimation in concurrent measurement scenarios, despite measurements being obtained sequentially. Extensive numerical simulations validate our theoretical analysis and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, highlighting substantial improvements over existing approaches across various scenarios.

In real-world applications for automatic guided vehicle (AGV) navigation, the positioning system based on the time-of-flight (TOF) measurements between anchors and tags is confronted with the problem of insufficient measurements caused by blockages to radio signals or lasers, etc. Mounting multiple tags at different positions of the AGV to collect more TOFs is a feasible solution to tackle this difficulty. Vehicle localization by exploiting the measurements between multiple tags and anchors is a rigid body localization (RBL) problem, which estimates both the position and attitude of the vehicle. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the state-of-the-art solutions to the RBL problem do not deal with missing measurements, and thus will result in degraded localization availability and accuracy in harsh environments. In this paper, different from these existing solutions for RBL, we model this problem as a sensor network localization problem with missing TOFs. To solve this problem, we propose a new efficient RBL solution based on Euclidean distance matrix (EDM) completion, abbreviated as ERBL-EDMC. Firstly, we develop a method to determine the upper and lower bounds of the missing measurements to complete the EDM reliably, using the known relative positions between tags and the statistics of the TOF measurements. Then, based on the completed EDM, the global tag positions are obtained from a coarse estimation followed by a refinement step assisted with inter-tag distances. Finally, the optimal vehicle position and attitude are obtained iteratively based on the estimated tag positions from the previous step. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed ERBL-EDMC method effectively solves the RBL problem with incomplete measurements. It obtains the optimal positioning results while maintaining low computational complexity compared with the existing RBL methods based on semi-definite relaxation (SDR).

This paper presents a two-step stochastic hybrid estimation (TS-SHE) algorithm for robust and accurate carrier phase tracking of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals in urban environments with significant power degradation and fluctuation. The proposed algorithm adaptively combines a bank of parallel Kalman filters with different dynamic state models to cope with the non-stationarity of GNSS signals. Different from conventional approaches including the phase lock loop (PLL), the Kalman filter (KF) and the interacting multiple model (IMM) method, which strongly rely on the a priori fixed signal model to ensure good tracking performance, we develop a novel stochastic filter transition strategy utilizing the information from reliable signal condition evaluation to overcome the performance degradation caused by the model mismatch in urban environments. Therein, for the first time we use the prior information of signal fading conditions for more accurate combined weighting of all component filters. Specifically, to obtain the prior information, GNSS data are sequentially buffered and analyzed in the first step. Then in the second step, optimized filter weights are generated and the overall combined carrier phase is estimated. We analyze the theoretical performance of the new algorithm and show the effects of different design parameters on the performance. The primary advantages of the proposed algorithm include: 1) the ability to rapidly recover carrier phase observation when blocked signals are re-acquired, and 2) high accuracy in carrier phase estimation of GNSS signals corrupted by strong multipath fading. Simulation and real data experiment results show the enhanced robustness and improved accuracy of the proposed TS-SHE algorithm, compared with conventional carrier phase tracking methods.