Next-Generation Navigation Possible without GPS

The advanced technology could be employed to develop navigation systems that encounter the strict necessities of completely autonomous automobiles, like unmanned drones and driverless cars.

Headed by Zak Kassas, an assistance lecturer of computer and electrical enginnering in UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering, the team presented its study at the 2016 Institute of Navigation Global Navigation Satellite System Conference in Portland, Ore, in September. The two types of research, “Performance Characterization of Positioning in LTE Systems” and “Signals of Opportunity Aided Inertial Navigation,” both won the presentation awards.

Most of the navigation processes in portable electronics and cars utilize the space-based Global Navigation Satellite System, which comprises the U.S. system GPS, Russian system GLONASS, Chinese System Beidou and European System Galileo. For accurate technologies, like missiles and aerospace navigation systems usually, link GPS with a great quality on-board Integration Navigation System (INS) that offers a big level of short-term precision but ultimately drifts when it loses touch with exterior signals.

Despite enhancements in such technology, the INS/GPS systems will not experience the demands of upcoming autonomous automobiles for numerous reasons. Firstly, the GPS signals alone are exceedingly unusable and weak in specific environments such as deep canyons. Secondly, GPS signals are susceptible to unintentional and intentional interference and jamming. Thirdly, civilian GPS signals are unauthenticated, unencrypted and specified in publicly obtainable documents, creating them spoofable.

Present movements in autonomous vehicle navigation systems hence depend not just on INS/GPS but a group of other sensor-based technologies like lasers, sonar, and cameras.

“By incorporating more number of sensors, scientists are throwing everything but the kitchen sink to make autonomous vehicle navigation systems for the unavoidable scenario that GPS signals become unavailable. We took a distinct approach, which is to use signals that are already out there in the surroundings,” says Kassas.

According to the research performed by Kassas’s group, it is revealed that such techniques use existing communication signals, known as ‘signals of opportunity’ for navigation. The overall system can be utilized by itself, or more likely, to offer INS data in the situation that GPS fails. The end-to-end research of the group comprises theoretical analysis of SOPS in the environment, creating specialized software structured radios (SDRs) that will abstractrelevant positioning and timing algorithms, and ultimately testing the system on unmanned drones and ground vehicles.

Conclusion

“Autonomous automobiles will inevitably present in a socio-cultural revolution. My group is addressing the limitations linked with realizing cost-effective, practical and trustworthy autonomous vehicles. The ultimate goals of the team is to procure such vehicles to function with no human in theloop for elongated periods of time, conducting missions like rescue, surveillance, search, farming, mapping, package delivery, fire-fighting,and transportation,” says Kasas.