Optimum Digital Filters for GNSS Tracking Loops

Pejman L. Kazemi Position, Location And Navigation (PLAN) Group Department of Geomatics Engineering University of Calgary

BIOGRAPHY Pejman L. Kazemi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geomatics Engineering at the University of Calgary. He received his BSc in Electrical Engineering, majoring in telecommunications from the Iran University of Science and Technology in 2006. His research interests are in GNSS software receiver design, spread spectrum communication and digital signal processing. ABSTRACT In a traditional loop filter the product between loop noise bandwidth and integration time (BLT) should remain well below unity in order to ensure the stability of the loop. This constraint, required for having a stable loop, significantly limits the maximum integration time and/or noise bandwidth. The current methodology in designing digital tracking loop filters mostly relies on transforming a continuoustime system into a discrete-time one. This transform, from the S-domain to Z-domain, is done by means of Laplace to Z-domain mappings, such as the bilinear transform. In these cases, the digital loops will be equivalent to its analog counterpart only if BLT is close to zero (Stephens & Thomas 1995, Lindsey & Chie 1981). As the product BLT increases, the effective loop noise bandwidth and closed loop pole locations deviate from the desired ones and eventually the loop becomes unstable. By designing filters with the controlled-root method the deficiencies of the continuous-update approximation in large BLT applications are avoided (Stephens & Thomas 1995). However, by using this method for the conventional NCOs (denoted as rate-only feedback NCOs in Stephens & Thomas 1995) which are mostly used in software receivers, the BLT is still limited to less than 0.4 for third order loops.

In this paper, by considering the effect of integration and dump in the linear model of the digital phase-locked loop and considering rate-only feedback NCOs, loop filters are designed totally in the Z-domain by utilizing a method that minimizes the loop phase jitter. It is shown that, by using these new filters, a significant improvement for high BLT can be achieved, allowing one to operate in ranges where previous methods can not operate. As a result, stable loops with higher bandwidths and/or longer integration time can be easily designed. The deficiencies of previous methods are analyzed and the loop instability for large BLT is shown by employing live GPS signals. New loop filters are implemented in a GPS software receiver and their performance for large BLT evaluated by using live GPS signals for static tests and hardware simulated signals for dynamic tests. INTRODUCTION Phase-locked loops are widely used in modern communication systems. As a result of the rapid evolution of digital microelectronics technologies the current trend is to implement and design phase-locked loops in the digital domain. Especially for software receivers this is an inevitable choice. Much research has been done in this field and an excellent survey of theoretical and experimental works accomplished in this area up to 1981 can be found in (Lindsey & Chie 1981). Most research focuses on different methods for the design of the phase detector and very little effort has been spent on the design of loop filters. Since theoretical and practical aspects of continuous phase-locked loops and their performance in different situations is well known, the typical methodology in designing digital loop filters is based on the transformation from the analog domain (Gardner 2005, Stephens 2001, Best 1999, Lindsey & Chie 1981). This technique is widely used for GNSS signal tracking loops (Ward et al 2006, Stephens 2001, Tsui 2000, Spilker 1997). In these methods, filters are first designed in the S-

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domain and then, for the digital implementation, they are transformed into the Z-domain. Examples of analog to digital transformation methods are the bilinear, boxcar, impulse invariant transforms. The necessary condition for these filters to resemble their analog counterparts is to have a BLT near zero (Lindsey & Chie 1981). As this product increases the filter zeros are displaced with respect to the position originally designed in the analog domain. Moreover, changes in the open loop gain can be observed and the true noise bandwidth tends to be larger than the target one. These phenomena can make the system unstable. Experimentally, it was proven that by employing transformation method, the third order loop remain stable for BLT less than 0.55. In the controlled-root method proposed by Stephens & Thomas (1995), loop filter constants are determined specifically for each BLT value. In this way the deficiencies for the loop design for different BLT are avoided and the digital loop has exactly the desired bandwidth, however the structure of the filter remains the same as the one obtained with the transformation method. In this case the maximum achievable BLT for a stable loop is limited to 0.4 for rate-only feedback NCOs (Stephens & Thomas 1995). For most communication applications, this condition is satisfied since BLT remains close to zero. However for some new GNSS applications, such as weak signal tracking and for extremely high dynamic applications, larger BLT values are required. Configurations with a 20 ms integration time and a 60 Hz bandwidth (BLT = 1.2) or with a 500 ms integration time and a 3 Hz bandwidth (BLT = 1.5) are impossible with these conventional methods. Another method which has been rarely treated in the literature is the minimization method. This method was first used by Gupta (1968) using Z-transform and modified Z-transform for analog-digital phase-locked loops. In this case the phase-locked loop is the same as the continuous case except that the filter is replaced by a discrete filter followed by a hold circuit (Gupta 1968). In Kumar & Hurd (1986) this minimization method was adopted for phase-locked loops with a substantial computation delay (transport lag). Minimization techniques for the design of digital tracking loops have only been marginally considered in the literature and tracking loops have been essentially designed by means of transformation methods. The main focus of this paper is the design of digital tracking loops directly in the Z-domain based on the linear model of the DPLL. More specifically a minimization technique is used to determine the filter structure and coefficients. These parameters are determined in order to minimize the variance of the phase error. The effect of the integration time is considered in the linear model to extend the operational range of the

filter to larger BLT values. Instantaneous update of the loop filter (i. e., in the absence of a computational delay) is assumed. It is shown that the transfer function of the optimum loop filter with the rate-only feedback NCO is different from what is currently used for most GNSS receivers. As a result, it becomes possible to go beyond the 0.4 BLT limit. This minimization technique for filter design has never been applied to GNSS receivers, thus it represents the innovative contribution of this paper. The detailed filter design procedure for a ramp change in the input frequency is given. This choice of frequency input gives a steady state error equivalent to those achievable with a third order continuous-time loop. Finally, the performance and stability of the designed loops are shown by means of live GPS signals for both static and dynamic situations. Tests are conducted for BLT values at which conventional loops cannot operate at all. LINEAR DPLL MODEL The linear model for DPLL is shown in Figure 1. The model presented here is different form those presented in Stephens (2001) and Lindsey & Chie (1981) in that the present model explicitly accounts for the effect of the integrate and dump blocks. Under the assumption that the phase error is small and the discriminator is operating in its linear region, the discriminator is modeled as the difference between the average phase of the incoming signal and the average phase generated by the NCO in each integration interval. F(z) represents the transfer function of the loop filter and N(z) is the transfer function of the NCO when the averaging effect due to the integrate and dump block is accounted for. The input of the loop is assumed to be a phase signal affected by white Gaussian noise with power spectral density ni ni = . The random component of the NCO phase, due to the input noise is denoted by n0, and represents the deterministic component of the phase error.

ni
Average Over T

F(z)

= no +
Average Over T

N (z)
NCO

Figure 1. Linear DPLL model. The loop filter combines present and past values of the

residual phase, , to obtain the estimate for the next phase rate. In conventional NCOs (denoted as the rate-

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only feedback NCOs), which are the main interest of this paper, this estimate of phase rate is used to update the NCO rate for the next integration interval. In this case, since the phase rate is assumed to be constant over each integration interval, the average generated phase by the NCO in each interval is equivalent to the generated phase in the middle of the interval. As illustrated in Figure 2, the difference equation relating the average phase on the n+1th interval with the nth phase is given by:

will be simplified to the herein model under the valid assumption that the predetection bandwidth is very small as compared with the sampling frequency. In (Humphreys et al 2005), a simple approximation is used to take into account the effect of the integration and dump unit. Interestingly, multiplication of the Integration unit transfer function by the NCO transfer function is also equivalent to the model here.
T (Lindsey & Chie z 1 1981) which is not a valid model for large BLT values and the effect of averaging should be taken into account for performance analysis in these regions.

n +1 = n +
where

T ( n + n +1 ) 2

Usually the NCO is modeled as

(1)

is the average generated phase, n is an

estimated phase rate by the loop filter and T is the integration interval.
NCO Phase Nth integration interval

DESIGN OF THE OPTIMUM DISCRETE FILTER

The design of the optimum digital filter is based on the minimization of the function (Gupta 1968):
Q = n0 2 ( k ) +

n+1 n

(k )

(4)

Time

where (k ) = (k ) (k ) is the deterministic component of the phase difference between incoming and generated phase. The parameter is determined on the basis of noise bandwidth considerations. The first term on the right hand side of the (4) can be expressed in terms of the closed loop transfer function H(z) as follows:
n0 2 ( k ) = 1 2j

Figure 2. Schematic illustration of the NCO phase for the rate-only feedback NCO.

n0 n0

( z)

Since the required parameters for generating the local signal for the n+1 interval come from the nth interval there is an inherited delay in the DPLL. More specifically it is noted that the estimated phase rate for the n+1 interval is the loop filter output at the nth interval. By taking the Ztransform of Eq. (1) it is possible to obtain the NCO transfer function by considering the averaging effect:
N ( z) = T ( z + 1) . 2 z ( z 1)

dz z

(5)

where n0 n0 is the noise spectral density of n0 and is related to the input noise spectral density by
n 0 n 0 ( z ) = H ( z ) H ( z 1 ) ni ni ( z ) .

(6)

(2)

Denoting the Z transforms of (k ) and (k ) by E(z) and (z ) , respectively, the second term of (4) can be written as

From Figure 1 the close loop transfer function can be written as:
F ( z) N ( z) . H ( z) = 1 + F ( z) N ( z)

(k ) = =

1 2j

E( z)E( z

dz z dz z

(3) where:

1 2j

(7)

(1 H ( z ))(1 H ( z 1 ))

In designing loop filters in the Z-domain, the model of the NCO extremely impacts the transfer function of the filter and should be accurately modeled. In the literature different approaches have been adopted. For example, in Legrand (2001), a multi-rate model for DPLL including the effect of integration and dump is derived. The model

= ( z )( z 1 ) .

(8)

From Eqs. (5) and (7) the cost function can be written as

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1 Q= 2j

[(1 W ( z ) N ( z ) W ( z ) N ( z )) dz + P( z )W ( z )W ( z )] z
1

BL =

B . T

(16)

(9)

where
W ( z) = H ( z) N ( z)

(10)

The integral in (15) can be computed by expressing B in terms of the coefficients of H(z). Eq. (16) shows that the noise bandwidth is a function of the normalized noise bandwidth and of the integration time (loop update interval). For instance a loop designed with a normalized noise bandwidth of 0.5 will result in a loop noise bandwidth of 25 Hz for T=20 ms.
LOOP FILTER DESIGN FOR A FREQUENCY RAMP INPUT

and
P ( z ) = [ + ( z )]N ( z ) N ( z 1 ) .

(11)

By applying the standard minimization procedure to Q the optimum solution for W(z) and thus F(z) can be found as (Gupta 1968, Jury 1964)
z[ W0 ( z ) =

In this section the designing procedure for a filter with a frequency ramp as input is detailed. In this case the designed loop will be equivalent to a 3rd order continuoustime loop. In this case, (t ) = t 2 u (t ) and Eq. (8) becomes
= T 2 z ( z + 1) T 2 z 1 ( z 1 + 1) . ( z 1) 3 ( z 1 1) 3

N ( z 1 ) ( z )
zP ( z ) P ( z)
+

]+

(12)

(17)

where
P( z ) = P + ( z ) P ( z ) .
+

The transfer function of the NCO with the averaging effect is given by (2) and from (11), P(z) can be written as (13)
P( z ) = 4 - z 8 + 4 z 7 + ( 4 + h ) z 6 + ( 4h 4) z 5 + ( + (z - 1)8 (6h + 10) z 4 + ( 4h 4) z 3 + ( 4 + h ) z 2 + 4 z 1 ) (18) ( z 1)8 T az 4 + bz 3 + cz 2 + dz + e = ( z 1) 4 4 az 4 + bz 3 + cz 2 + dz 1 + e ; ( z 1 1) 4

T 2

In the above P (z ) is the part of P (z ) whose poles and zeros lay inside the unit circle and [ ]+ represents the part of the partial fraction expansion of its argument whose poles are inside the unit circle. Finally from Eqs. (3), (10) and (12) the optimum digital filter transfer function is found as
F ( z) = W0 ( z ) . 1 W0 ( z ) N ( z )

(14)

The optimum filter in (14) is a function of and, as mentioned earlier, this parameter is determined from noise bandwidth considerations. More specifically the normalized loop noise bandwidth is defined as
2B = 1 2j

where
h=

H ( z)H ( z

dz z

T 4 .

(19)

(15)

The terms in the brackets of Eq. (18) represent P (z ) + and

P (z ) , respectively. By equating the coefficients of equal powers of z in Eq. (18), the following set of equations are obtained:

where B is the one sided normalized loop noise bandwidth and is related to one sided loop noise bandwidth as

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ae = 1 be + ad = 4 . ce + bd + ac = h 4 ed + dc + bc + ab = 4h 4 2 2 2 2 2 a + b + c + d + e = 10 + 6h

(20)

Figure 3 shows the typical value of h required to obtain the normalized bandwidth in a large BLT region. It should be emphasized again that all of the previous filter structures will result in an unstable loop for a BLT larger than 0.55.
3

The argument of the [ ]+ operator in Eq. (12) can be written as:

Normalized Bandwidth (BLT)

2.5

N ( z 1 ) ( z )
zP ( z )

T 5 ( z + 1) 3 z 2
2(a + bz + cz 2 + dz 3 + ez 4 )( z 1) 3

(21)

1.5

By considering the fact that the roots of a + bz + cz 2 + dz 3 + ez 4 are outside the unit circle and writing the partial fraction expansion of Eq. (21), W0 ( z ) can be computed and, consequently, from Eq. (14), F (z ) is derived as:
F= 2 z ( An z 2 + B n z + C n ) T ( Ad z 3 + B d z 2 +C d z + D d )

0.5

0 -5 10

10

-4

10

-3

10 h Parameter

-2

10

-1

10

(22)

Figure 3. One-sided Normalized Bandwidth versus the h parameter.

where the filter coefficients are related to coefficients in (20) and are given in the appendix. The filter structure can be further simplified. By computing the roots of the denominator in (22) it is found that the locations of the poles are fixed:
F=K z ( z z z )( z z z ) ( z 1) 2 ( z + 1)

Figures 4, 5 and 6 show the gain required and zeros position of the filter as a function of the required normalized bandwidth, respectively. In these figures BLT has been extended up to 3, however larger values are feasible for this filter structure (3 is chosen to have less than 10 dB peak in closed loop magnitude response).
4.5 4 3.5 Optimum Gain 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

(23)

where K is the optimal gain of the filter given by

2 An . K= TAd

(24)

The zeros of Eq. (23) can be found as the roots of An z 2 + Bn z + C n = 0. The structure of the proposed filter has an extra pole and zero with respect to a conventional third order loop filter. In order to find the coefficients of the filter for different noise bandwidths, Eq. (20) should be solved for a range of values of h. Note that, from the possible solutions of (20) for a given h, the only acceptable one is that resulting in a stable loop, which means that the roots of az 4 + bz 3 + cz 2 + dz + e should lay inside the unit circle. From these considerations the filter coefficients in Eq. (22) or equivalently, the zeros and gain in Eq. (23) can be computed. Finally from Eq. (3) and Eq. (15) the normalized bandwidth is obtained.

1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 Normalized Bandwidth (B LT)

Figure 4. Optimum gain versus Normalized Bandwidth for loop with frequency ramp as input.

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0.95 0.9 Real Part of Zero Location 0.85 0.8 0.75 0.7 0.65 0.6 0.55 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 Normalized Bandwidth (B LT)

Figure 5. Real part of the zero for a loop with a frequency ramp as input.
0.28 0.26 Imaginary Part of Zero Location 0.24 0.22 0.2 0.18 0.16 0.14 0.12 0.1 0.08 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 Normalized Bandwidth (B LT) 3

the performance for high BLT values) is chosen as example of transformation method. In contrast with the two other methods the coefficient of the filter is solely determined by the bandwidth rather than by the bandwidth and update interval of the loop. The deficiency of the transformation method is obvious in the magnitude and phase diagrams of Figure 7. Although the filter is designed to have a tracking loop with a 15 Hz bandwidth, the actual bandwidth of the loop is 32.8 Hz, where most of the increase in bandwidth comes from the undesired peak of the filter magnitude response rather than the higher 3 dB cutoff frequency. Stability can be obtained for BLT values less than about 0.55 by this method. But because of the mentioned deficiency of this method, its use is not recommended for BLT larger than about 0.25. The coefficients from Table VIII in Stephens & Thomas (1995) for a 0.3 BLT are used for the controlled-root method. The filter structure in this case can be considered the same as the previous one with digital boxcar integrators. The coefficients of the filter are determined based on the BLT values, so it will have exactly the desired bandwidth with only two poles at 1. It is obvious from Figures 7 and 8 that the optimum filter slightly outperforms the controlled-root filter in terms of transient response and the peak in magnitude response. Since the performance of these filters are near to each other in their comparable region and the controlled-root filter has only two poles, it is recommended to use the controlled-root filter for BLT values less than 0.4 to obtain less noisy Doppler estimates. However, for BLT values larger than 0.4 it becomes necessary to add extra zeros and poles in the filter structure to achieve stability in these regions.
Bode Diagram

Figure 6. Imaginary part of the zero for a loop with a frequency ramp as input.

Magnitude (dB)

It is also possible to increase the gain in Eq. (24) up to the gain margin for fixed zeros locations to obtain a higher bandwidth and faster transient response.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

15 10 5 0 -5 -10

Optimum Controlled-Root T ransformation

As Eq. (23) shows, there is a pole at -1 in the filter structure. Although this pole has been obtained as a result of an optimization procedure, in practice it would cause stability problems. Thus it should be shifted to a value less than 1, for example 0.95. In general, the presence of this pole in the filter structure produces a nosier loop filter output with respect to the conventional filter structures and for BLT less than 0.4. However the overall loop performance in terms of phase jitter will be improved. In Figure 6 the bode plots of three different methods for third order loop filter design are compared for integration time of 20 ms and desired noise bandwidth of 15 Hz. The filter structure as in (Ward et al 2006) with a digital bilinear transform (boxcar integrators severely degrade

45 0 -45 -90 -135 -180 -225 -270 -315 -360 -405 0 10

Phase (deg)

10

10 Frequency (rad/sec)

10

Figure 7. Close loop bode diagram of different loop filters design at BLT=0.3 (T=20 ms, BL=15 Hz)

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1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0

Step Response Optimum Controlled-Root T ransformation

successfully tracked. As shown in Figure 9 for PRN 11 (the performance of this satellite is also indicative of other satellites), all the results show successful tracking of the signal and, because of the long integration time, phase and code jitter are consequently reduced. The maximum integration time for transformation and controlled-root methods for a 4-Hz bandwidth is limited to only about 100 ms, however with the proposed filter structure it becomes possible to integrate over 1 second. The main limiting factor in the latter case is the well known sinc-patterned correlation loss in each integration interval. This correlation loss is caused by the frequency error in each integration interval (Spilker 1997).
50 40 CNo (dB-Hz) 30 20 10 0 0 40 80 120 Time (s) 160 Carrier Doppler (Hz) 1900

Amplitude

0.5 T ime (sec)

1.5

Figure 8. Step response of different loop filters design at BLT=0.3 (T=20 ms ,BL=15 Hz)

1850

Code Phase Error (Chips)

0.1 0 -0.1 -0.2 0

Phae Error (Deg)

Another important point is that the solutions of Eq. (20) should be accurate enough to give an accuracy of approximately four significant digits for the locations of zeros and gain values. Note that the round off errors in the solution of Eq. (20) may accumulate when computing Eq. (A.1) in the appendix. This becomes more significant for the design of higher order loops.
TRACKING RESULTS

1800

1750 0

40

80 120 TIme (s)

160

0.2

50

To evaluate the designed filters performance for large BLT values, two sets of data are used. IF samples were recorded using a NovAtel Euro-3M Card. The main objectives of these tests are to show the stability and tracking ability of the designed filters for large BLT values, in a range where conventional methods can not operate at all. These tests are specially conducted in long integration times where the update rate of the loop becomes slow. Interested readers can refer to Kazemi & ODriscoll (2008) for a detailed description of a method to increase coherent integration time beyond 20 ms in the L1 GPS signal. The first data set was collected in an open-sky environment in static conditions. An integration time of 400 ms and a noise bandwidth of 4 Hz (resulting in BLT of 1.6) were chosen for this test. An OCXO clock was used since a stable clock is required to integrate signal for such a long period. Because of the high BLT value, the controlled-root and transformation method cannot operate in this configuration. Tracking was initialized with FLL for one second and then switched to PLL with 1 ms of integration time and a bandwidth of 3 Hz. After bit synchronization, the integration time was increased to 400 ms with a bandwidth of 4 Hz. If a bandwidth higher than 3 Hz is required at the initial tracking stage, the bandwidth reduction and the increase in integration time should be done gradually, to ensure that the filter converges to the true value. All six satellites in view were

40

80 120 Time (s)

160

-50 0

40

80 120 Time (s)

160

Figure 9. All of the tracking merits shows stable loop for T=400 ms and BL=4 Hz (BLT=1.6)

The second data set tested was collected using a Spirent 7700 GPS hardware simulator. The internal TCXO clock of the Euro-3M card was used and the receiver set to follow a rectangular trajectory. In Figure 10 the carrier Doppler frequency of PRN 19 is plotted. The sinusoid variations in Doppler are caused by the clock and the rest are caused by the motion of the receiver. These sinusoid variations are due to the clock-steering behavior of the Euro-3M receiver being enabled. This behavior puts the tracking loop under the continuous stress of the Doppler and Doppler rate change. As shown in Figure 11, the signal was also attenuated down to 30 dB-Hz. Because of the continuous variation in the Doppler rate, an integration time of 20 ms is a better choice for tracking this signal, but 100 ms of integration is used to show the ability of the designed filter in high BLT values. This choice also enables the receiver to operate in lower signal levels. Fixing the integration time to 100 ms, the conventional filter structures is analyzed at first. To ensure stability a loop designed by employing bilinear transformation (Ward et al. 2006) with a 5 Hz bandwidth was used.

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As shown in Figure 10 at around 115 seconds, because of the rapid change in the carrier Doppler frequency, the loop was unable to track this rapid change (where the line of sight acceleration reaches to about 0.8 G) and eventually total loss of lock occurred. Figure 11 shows that the loss of carrier lock is followed by a loss of code lock. As a result, a wider bandwidth is required to track this signal successfully. However, by increasing the bandwidth from 5 Hz to 7 Hz (BLT=0.7), an instable loop is obtained. However, the optimum filter designed from Eq. (23) for a loop with 12 Hz bandwidth (BLT=1.2) results in a stable loop that successfully tracks the signal. This is a significant improvement with respect to conventional loops.
-1360 -1370 -1380 Carrier Doppler (Hz) -1390 -1400 -1410 -1420 -1430 -1440 -1450 0 T=100 ms, BL=12 Hz T=100 ms, BL=5 Hz, Trans. T=100 ms, BL=7 Hz, Trans. 20 40 60 80 100 Time (s) 120 140 160 180

changes in Doppler frequency in each 100 ms cause phase a mismatch between the incoming and locally generated signals, which is correctly detected by the phase discriminator. Epochs of the maximum mismatch exactly correspond to the epochs with the maximum Doppler rate change. Reducing the update interval to 20 ms could reduce this phase mismatch, however choosing longer update intervals becomes inevitable in very weak signal conditions. Figure 12 shows the output of the phase discriminator at the transition time from strong signal power to 30 dB-Hz. It is obvious that the phase error with 100 ms remains approximately at the same level as before (again mainly caused by the dynamics), but the phase error with 20 ms integration time becomes much noisier.
50 T=100 ms, BL=12 Hz 40 30 T=20 ms, BL=10 Hz

Phase Error (Deg)

20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 26 28 30 Time (s) 32 34

Figure 12. Output of the PLL discriminator.

0.2 0.15 0.1
T=100 ms, BL=12 Hz T=100 ms, BL=5 Hz, Trans.

Figure 10. Comparison of optimum filter carrier Doppler estimate with conventional design.
50

T=20 ms T=100 ms

Code Phase Error (chips)

0.05 0 -0.05 -0.1 -0.15 -0.2 -0.25 0 20 40 60 80 100 Time (s) 120 140 160 180

40

T=100 ms, BL=7 Hz, Trans.

30 CNo (dB-Hz)

20

10

Figure 13. Output of the DLL discriminator.

-10 0 20 40 60 80 Time 100 120 140 160 180

Figure 11. CN0 estimate.

In DPLLs, with each update interval, the fixed locally generated carrier frequency is correlated with the incoming signal. The assumption of having a constant frequency over each 100 ms is not valid in this test. The performance is compared with an integration time of 20 ms and a bandwidth of 10 Hz. As shown in Figure 12,

As shown in Figure 13, the advantage of choosing 100 ms becomes apparent in reducing code jitter since the code does not experience this amount of dynamics especially in aided-DLL scheme.
CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented new filter structures for DPLLs with rate-only feedback NCOs. Filters are optimum in the

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sense that based on the linear Z-domain model of the loop, the phase noise variance is minimized. It was shown that by considering the effect of averaging in the NCO, the operational range of the conventional loop filters, in terms of BLT values, can significantly be extended. As a result, one can design stable loops with higher bandwidths and/or longer integration times. This becomes very important for high dynamics and/or weak GNSS signal tracking. While practically BLT is limited to less than 0.4 for controlled-root and transformation methods and for third order loops, this number can be extended to more than 3, when the optimum structure derived herein is adopted. An operational range of BLT less than 3 is recommend to have less than 10 dB peak in the closed loop magnitude response. However, stability can be obtained even for larger BLT. Design curves for a frequency ramp as input were given which enable one to design filters for a selection of normalized loop noise bandwidth. The same procedure can be applied to derive filters for other loop inputs. Practical considerations for the design and use of these filters were also given. Stability of the designed loops for large BLT values were also shown by using true GPS signals in static and dynamic cases.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kazemi, P. L. and ODriscoll, C. (2008) Comparison of Assisted and Stand-Alone Methods for Increasing Coherent Integration Time for Weak GPS Signal Tracking, Submitted to the Proceedings of the ION GNSS 2008, September 16-19, 2008, Savannah, Georgia. Kumar, R. and Hurd, W.J. (1986) A class of optimum digital phase locked loops, 25th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control ,Volume 25, Part 1, Dec. 1986 Page(s):1632 1634. Legrand, F. (2002) Spread Spectrum Signal Tracking Loop Models and Raw Measurements Accuracy Improvement Method, PhD Thesis, Institut National Polytechnique deToulouse (INPT), France,2002. Lindsey, W. C. and C. M. Chie (1981) A Survey of Digital Phase-Locked Loops, in Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 69, No. 4, pp 410-431, April. Ma, C., G. Lachapelle, and M.E. Cannon (2004) Implementation of a Software GPS Receiver, Proceedings of GNSS 2004 (Session A3, Long Beach, CA, 21-24 September), The Institute of Navigation, Fairfax, VA. Spilker, J.J. (1997) Fundamentals of Signal Tracking Theory in Global Positioning System: Theory and Applications Volume I, Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics Volume 164. Stephens D. R. (2001) Phase-Locked Loops for Wireless Communications: Digital, Analog and Optical Implementations, Springer; 2nd edition, 2001. Stephens, S.A. and J.B. Thomas (1995) Controlled-Root Formulation for Digital Phase-Locked Loops in IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, Vol.31, No. 1 pp 78-95. Thomas, J. B. (1989) An Analysis of digital phase-locked Loops, Publication 89-2, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, Feb. 1989. Tsui, James B-Y. (2000) Fundamentals of Global Positioning System Receivers: A Software Approach, John Wiley & Sons Inc. Van Dierendonck, A.J. (1997) GPS Receivers in Global Positioning System: Theory and Application Volume I, Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics Volume 164. Ward, P.W., J.W. Betz and C.J. Hegarty (2006) Satellite Signal Acquisition, Tracking, and Data Demodulation, Understanding GPS Principles and Applications, E. D. Kaplan and C. J. Hegarty, Norwood, MA, Artech House, Inc., 153-241.

The author would like to thank his supervisors Professor G. Lachapelle and Dr. C. ODriscoll for their continuous encouragement and support. Dr. D. Borio is acknowledged for his valuable comments.
REFERENCES

Best R. E. (1999) Phase-Locked Loops, Designs Simulation, and Applications, McGraw-Hill, fourth edition. Gardner, F.M. (2005) Phase Lock Techniques, Third Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, USA. Gupta, S. C. (1968) On Optimum Digital Phase-Locked Loop, IEEE Transactions on Communication Technology, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 340-344, April 1968. Humphreys, E. D., M. L. Psiaki, and P. K. Kinter, Jr., (2005) GPS Carrier Tracking Loop Performance in the Presence of Ionospheric Scintillation, in Proceedings of ION GPS/GNSS, 13-16 Sept., Long beach CA, pp. 156166, Institute of Navigation. Jury, E. I. (1964) Theory and Application of the zTransform Method, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964.

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Watson, R., M.G. Petovello, G. Lachapelle and R. Klukas (2007) Impact of Oscillator Errors on IMU-Aided GPS Tracking Loop Performance, European Navigation Conference, Geneva, Swizterland.
APPENDIX

In this appendix the relation between the filters coefficients and the coefficients in Eq. (20) are given:
A n = (-6bd- 42ae- 10ce + 24ab + 9b2 - 16ad - 24be + 6ac + 3e2 + 19a2 + 8bc + 3c2 + d 2 ) Bn = (24bd+ 56be + 24ce- 24a2 - 24ab + 96ae + 8cd - 8e2 8b2 + 48ad + 8ac) Cn = (8de + 9a 2 - 24ad - 46ae + 8ab + 3d2 - 10bd- 24be + 3b2 + 9e2 - 6ac - 6ce + c 2 ) Ad = (-8ac- 8ab - 8ad - 8ae - 8a 2 ) Bd = (-32be+ 3e2 - 10ce- 14bd- 24ad - 2ac + b 2 + 8ab 50ae + d 2 + 11a2 + 3c2 ) Cd = (4bd - 4ce + 6a2 + 8ab - 2e2 + 4ae - 2c2 + 8ad + 4ac + 2b2 + 2d2 ) Dd = (6ac + 24ad + 54ae- 8ab - 3d2 - c 2 - e 2 - 9a2 - 3b2 + 10bd + 14ce + 32be)

(A.1)

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 10/10 ION GNSS 2008, Session C5, Savannah, GA, 16-19 September 2008