JSG T.31

Introduction

The family of modernized and recently-developed global and regional navigation satellite systems is being further extended by plentiful Low Earth Orbit (LEO) navigation satellites that are almost 20 times closer to Earth as compared to current GNSS satellites. This namely means that navigation sensory data with much stronger signal power will be abundantly available, being in particular attractive in GNSS-challenged environments. Next to the development of new navigation signal transmitters, a rapid growth in the number of mass-market GNSS and software-defined receivers would at the same time demand efficient ways of data processing in terms of computational power and capacity.

Such a proliferation of multi-system and multi-frequency measurements, that are transmitted and received by mixed-type sensing modes, raises the need for a thorough research into the future of next-generation navigation satellite systems, thereby appealing rigorous theoretical frameworks, models and algorithms that enable such GNSS-LEO integration to serve as a high-accuracy and high-integrity tool for Earth-, atmospheric- and space-sciences.

Objectives

• Identify and investigate challenges that are posed by the integration of multi-GNSS and LEO observations.
• Develop and study proper theory for GNSS integrity and quality control.
• Conduct an in-depth analysis of the mass-market GNSS sensory data such as those of smart-phones.
• Improve computational efficiency of GNSS parameter estimation and testing in the presence of a huge number of GNSS sensing nodes.
• Investigate the problem of high-dimensional integer ambiambiguity resolution and validation in a multi-system, multi-frequency landscape.
• Articulate theoretical developments and findings through the journals and conference proceedings.

Program of activities

While the investigation will strongly be based on the theoretical aspects of the GNSS-LEO observation modelling and challenges, they will be also accompanied by numerical studies of both the simulated and real-world data. Given the expertise of each member, the underlying studies will be conducted on both individual and collaborative bases. The output of the group study is to provide the geodesy and GNSS communities with well-documented models and algorithmic methods through the journals and conference proceedings.

Membership

Amir Khodabandeh (Australia), chair
Ali Reza Amiri-Simkooei (Iran)
Gabriele Giorgi (Germany)
Bofeng Li (China)
Robert Odolinski (New Zealand)
Jacek Paziewski (Poland)
Dimitrios Psychas (The Netherlands)
Jean-Marie Sleewagen (Belgium)
Peter J.G. Teunissen (Australia)
Baocheng Zhang (China)