ESL Student Presentation Series (ESPS)

As part of the ESL Student Presentation Series, Andrew O'Brien will be giving a presentation about his work next Thursday, June 18.  As always, pizza and pop will be served, so please join us for some food and an interesting talk by one of your fellow students!

Date, Time, Place:

Thursday, June 18

12:30PM-1:30PM

ESL Classroom

Title:

Adaptive Antenna Arrays for Precision GPS Receivers

Abstract:

In recent years, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has given rise to new advances in critical military, aviation, and safety-of-life applications. Yet, as the dependence on GPS has grown, there has emerged increasing concern of encountering GPS-denied environments. In particular, GPS receivers are very vulnerable to signals from both unintentional radio frequency interference and hostile jamming. To overcome such interference, system designers are faced with two options. The first is to pursue "alternative navigation" technology as failover in GPS-denied environments. The second option -- which this research addresses -- is to design interference suppression systems for these receivers.

Antenna arrays are currently the only feasible technology for allowing GPS reception in harsh and sustained interference environments. Consequently, GPS antenna arrays are becoming increasingly widespread and are actively being used to provide interference suppression capabilities. The pattern of these antenna arrays is controlled via adaptive digital filtering which perform beamforming/null steering in specific directions. There are still many limitations to the adaptive antennas in use today, and improving these systems remains an active area of research. 

This presentation will discuss recent advances in adaptive filter and receiver design for GPS antenna arrays. An overview of GPS and GPS antenna arrays will be provided. Our research will then be discussed, which touches upon a wide range of topics including optimal interference suppression, prevention of GPS signal distortion, antenna calibration, and precision applications.