ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-10909
Open Date: 20/07/2021 16:11 CEST
Closing Date: 21/09/2021 13:00 CEST

Operating in harsh propagating conditions, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers in handheld user equipment (UE) are impacted by multipath and fading that cause significant positioning errors. Moreover, these UE may also be exposed to interference and spoofing attacks from malevolent parties. High-end antennas or beamforming algorithms have been successfully employed for detecting and mitigating multipath and/or spoofing. However, driven by low production costs, the handheld UE has to rely on very small antennas and simpler radio frequency and baseband processing to deal with channel impairments or signal forging and tampering. In spite of these devices comprising multiple antennas, the tailoring of the aforementioned techniques to the hardware constraints of handheld platforms has not been done yet and would need to be demonstrated.Spatial diversity is a promising concept that may be used to overcome signal impairments on mass-market handheld devices, despite their physical and hardware limitations. Current handheld UE already incorporates multiple antennas and supports diversity processing for telecommunication signals (e.g. 5G devices already feature multiple inputs multiple outputs architectures), however, this does not yet extend to GNSS signals.This activity will therefore investigate and demonstrate GNSS processing architectures and algorithms that use spatial diversity to mitigate multipath and enhance resilience of handheld devices.This activity encompasses the following tasks:- Assessing state-of-the-art relevant to the activity, in particular multipath, interference and anti-spoofing processing algorithms that exploit spatial diversity at user level- Designing and optimising spatial diversity architectures for GNSS in low-cost handheld UE- Implementing and testing the solutions ina laboratory environment (breadboards)- Assessing and benchmarking performances against references (e.g. mass-market chipsets withhigh-end antennas and professional-grade solutions) through laboratory and field trials

Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: > 500 KEURO
Authorised Contact Person: Maxime Nicolas Gislain Guy
Initiating Service: TEC-ESN
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0901-01 – Technology Developme
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EE+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO+SE
Technology Keywords: 6-B-II-Ground Receivers
Products Keywords: 2-L-5-a-SW for RF Comm. design, analysis, simulation, etc.