Positioning Performance of LEO Mega Constellations in Deep Urban Canyon Environments
Harshal More, Ernestina Cianca, Mauro De Sanctis
Abstract
Lack of direct line-of-sight (LOS) signals from mainstream Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in deep urban canyon environments leads to poor Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) accuracy. In spite of various available techniques and solutions, the PNT accuracy is not even comparable with non-urban canyon environment. With an emergence of new applications such as autonomous driving and indoor positioning, and considering the aforementioned weakness of GNSS this research analyzes an alternative solution using Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Mega Constellations for PNT estimation. This paper compares the positioning performance in terms of Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP) of mainstream GNSS (GPS, Galileo) and LEO Mega Constellations (Starlink, OneWeb) by designing a Deep Urban Canyon Environment. The paper demonstrates that LEO constellations offers better GDOP due to more visible satellites at a given epoch in urban canyon with respect to GNSS.