GNSS receiver performance in urban environment: Challenges and test approaches for automotive applications

In the modern automotive industry, the wide variety of Intelligent Transport System (ITS) services needs a positioning unit. The core of such unit is a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver hybridized or assisted by other sensors or data. In harsh environments, such as urban scenarios, the testing and performance assessment of these terminals is of paramount importance for ITS applications. In fact such environments are very challenging for the GNSS core unit. This paper proposes some test procedures suitable to assess the performance of GNSS receivers, as part of an hybridyzed positioning unit, in urban scenarios. The benefits of a GNSS receiver based on the Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology is exploited by presenting a set of results obtained on field tests.