Multipath-Aided Direct Position Estimation

In contrast to multipath rejection techniques, in Multipath-Aided Direct Position Estimation (MA-DPE), multipath signals are transformed from being unwanted interference to being additional navigation signals coming from virtual satellites at their mirror-image positions after building reflection. These signals are then deeply integrated via Direct Position Estimation (DPE), where the receiver position is obtained via optimizing for the highest cross-correlation between the estimated signal, modeled as a function of receiver position, and the received signal. Inclusion of multipath components presents a more accurate representation of signal reception, leading to a more accurate position estimate. An experiment was conducted in front of the 53m by 40m wind tunnel located at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, where the surface of the wind tunnel’s air intake valve is a reflector of GPS signals. We demonstrated through our experiment, an improvement in horizontal positioning accuracy and an increase in signal correlation amplitude.