Jamming an Uncalibrated GNSS Array Receiver of Distributed Antenna Elements for Concealed Installation in Passenger Cars

Abstract

Interference signals are a severe threat to any GNSS receiver. Due to the low reception power of satellite signals, even comparably weak interferences can significantly decrease the positioning accuracy of the receiver or lead to a complete signal loss. Therefore, any active interference signal has to be mitigated to ensure a continuous and safe operation. This is especially important in the field of automated driving, where the permanent awareness of a human being is no longer presumed and cars rely solely on GNSS to determine the absolute position necessary for navigation. While uniform rectangular arrays have shown to be the most effective method against interference signals by providing the ability to spatially mitigate incident signals, their size prevents an application in cars produced for the consumer mass market. This paper presents an arrangement, where a set of two distributed linear arrays is used, which seems promising for a concealed installation and allows the application of spatial signal processing algorithms such as beamforming and nulling. Consequences on the positioning accuracy from the joint processing of signals from distributed antenna elements are discussed and the capability to mitigate interference sources is demonstrated.