User Equipment (UE) Cognitive Functions

Echo Ridge and partner Argon ST, propose to validate the performance improvements of GPS UE, enabled by the addition of cognitive functionality, with respect to user interfacing, PVT accuracy, TTFF latency, jamming/spoofing resistance and power consumption efficiency. This will be accomplished through lab and field testing of a full functionality prototype cognitive UE hosted on a hand-held software defined radio (SDR) platform. The prototype platform will include a traditional GPS UE and cognitive-enable UE, allowing side by side performance comparison. The platform will utilize COTS/GOTS GPS signal processing software, accompanied by mature, open-source expert system software to allow platform portability while lowering cost and risk. The lab testing will include a high fidelity channel emulator capable of producing realistic and repeatable channel and environmental conditions including multipath and jammers/spoofers. The testing will show quantitative improve in performance ("through cognitive acting") in the context of the surrounding environment ("through cognitive sensing") for three common environmental challenges: narrowband interference (including jamming), spoofing and severe multipath. Our team will use novel and unique signal processing algorithms with respect to both sensing and acting, developed on recent ESM, cognitive technology and robust navigation contracts. BENEFIT: In both the military and commercial market places, there is an ever expanding use of radio-based navigation devices. Though they generally perform satisfactorily, in virtually every application there are instances where degraded accuracy or non-availability create dangerous situations. For military applications, degraded positional accuracy due to jamming can affect the precision of a guided weapon or dismount orientation. For commercial applications, the non-availability of GPS service inside a building can delay the arrival of emergency personnel to a 911 caller in distress. Historically much research has been done to improve the performance of GPS user equipment, yielding great gains in positional accuracy and availability. These activities have principally focused on improving the traditional functions in user equipment such as receiver sensitivity, reference oscillator stability, correlator speed, and signal processing algorithm performance. To create opportunities for future large gains in performance, new approaches and algorithms will need to be applied to user equipment including aiding using other RF signals of opportunity, and cognitive radio technology. Therefore, this research activity represents a means to provide large gains in user equipment performance vs. diminishing incremental benefits from traditional GPS user equipment research topics. These gains can benefit the growing markets and applications in both the military and commercial sectors.