A Comprehensive Study of Linear Kalman Filter Based Tracking Techniques under Ionosphere Scintillation

To accurately determine the position of the user, the navigation systems, GPS/IRNSS play a significant role. The integrity, reliability and continuity of these systems depend on the performance of the receiver which uses carrier tracking loop to maintain synchronization with the received signal. Under harsh conditions such as ionosphere scintillation and multipath effects, the performance of these loops deteriorates leading to loss of phase lock and also causes signal outages. Recursive and time varying nature of Kalman filter perform better in such harsh conditions as it continuously adapt the loop bandwidth to the changing signal parameters. This paper analyses the limitations of the traditional carrier tracking technique and provides a survey of linear Kalman filter based carrier tracking techniques and investigates its robustness when tracking the signals under ionosphere scintillation conditions.