Enhancements for Military Ground Based GPS Receivers in Urban Environments

This proposal addresses the Army SBIR program objective to develop and demonstrate GPS receiver improvements for ground users to optimize their positioning performance in urban applications. The proposed enhanced system (whose full configuration is shown in Figure 1 below) consists of (i) the Mayflower “NavAssure” SAASM GPS receiver; and (ii) receiver software enhancements in order to mitigate the performance issues for urban applications by incorporating Deep Integration (DI) with an IMU, Multipath Detection (MD), and Collaborative Navigation (CN) based on external GPS aiding measurements from collaborating receivers through a tactical radio (JTRS HMS a.k.a. “soldier’s radio”). Significant performance improvements, compared to typical existing military receivers, can be obtained with subsets of the above full configuration, i.e. (A) stand-alone “NavAssure” receiver with DI/MD software enhancements; and (B) stand-alone “NavAssure” receiver plus JTRS aiding and CN software enhancements. Mayflower is developing the “NavAssure” single chip SAASM GPS receiver (under the Navy GIF SBIR III program.) which is expected to be available in 2009 at a production cost of about $500 and typical power consumption of significantly less than 0.5 Watt. Theprogram. Mayflower is also developing the JTRS data interface under a Navy SPAWAR SBIR II program. The Phase I study will quantify the performance benefits of the proposed enhancements and demonstrate its feasibility to mitigate positioning performance degradation in urban applications. The follow on Phase II effort will implement these enhancements in software on the NavAssure SAASM GPS receiver platform and test and demonstrate its effectiveness in urban GPS applications..