Accurate Position and Attitude Determination in a Severe Multipath Environment Using an Uncalibrated Multi-Antenna-System

A novel proposal is made for the accurate determination of position and antenna attitude of a multi-antenna GNSS receiver in a multipath environment. In contrast to previous work no calibration of the gain and phase mismatches and crosstalk effects, that occur in the RF-Frontend, are necessary. This allows for the usage of heavily miniaturized RF-Frontends with highly integrated systems with non-negligible crosstalks and tolerances. The novel algorithm treats the estimation of antenna attitude, the multipath detection and mitigation as well as the calibration as a coupled problem and estimates the relevant unknowns in a joint procedure. Due to this approach a reliable position estimate can be determined even in challenging conditions without the need for very accurately calibrated - or nearly “ideal” hardware components.