GPS: User Position Calculation Including Advanced Troposphere Delay Modeling

Objective of this project is to analyze and mitigate troposphere delays induced in GPS signals, which can result in very large position errors while estimating user position. The standard models currently present do not take into account all the various set of parameters or elements of the troposphere that can cause a significant delay. This project also includes study of troposphere propagation delays that improve the understanding of GPS signal propagation through the troposphere during irregular conditions. This characteristic is very important as it can play crucial role in real time surveying, navigation, precision farming and positioning for emergency services. Due to the tropical nature of the Indian climate the troposphere delay can be observed significantly in India sub-continent. In order to accurately estimate delay troposphere in real time conditions is taken into account, which are provided by the Indian meteorological department, by their automatic weather surveillance systems. GPS data for stations in India is obtained from CORS data for Bangalore, from where we obtain the observation and navigation files used in the calculations. Obtained data is processed and run through various algorithms like least squares satellite position calculation, error mitigation and ray tracing algorithms to mitigate troposphere and better estimate user position. Apart from these algorithms this project also includes a study on various concepts/formulas that help in using the forecasted real time data to be used in snell’s law to estimate delay as part of ray tracing techniques. All the code development in this project is done using MATLAB by math works and GUI is developed for an easier interface. For analysis purposes the data is analyzed with and without the advanced mitigation techniques to show the improvement in position estimation using advanced troposphere mitigation techniques.