ATENEA
Advanced Techniques for Navigation Receivers and Applications

The ATENEA project aims to join deeply integrated GNSS/INS receiver architectures and LiDAR techniques to provide an advanced navigation solution. The approach is suitable for a wide range of surveying applications in difficult environments - urban mapping has been selected as a reference case.

Urban mapping by LiDAR images is already an active domain but today is only viable using high-end systems with a unitary cost in the order of €amp; 800 000. On the technical level, geo-location and reference for  scanned LiDAR observables is provided nowadays by loosely coupled GPS receivers and INS, leading to a lack of performance in urban scenarios with poor satellite visibility and harsh multipath conditions.

ATENEA will tackle the most challenging issues with this type of application, showing how the use of Galileo signals, integrated positioning and observable processing can combine to solve the more severe technical issues (robustness and continuity), increase accuracy and drastically reduce the system’s cost.

Description

The following technologies will be developed within the ATENEA project, providing innovative solutions not available in current receivers:

• GNSS Phase receiver, exploiting Galileo signal capabilities;
• innovative signal processing and interference mitigation techniques;
• closely, tightly and deeply coupled GNSS/INS receiver design;
• integrated GNSS/INS/LiDAR navigation filters.

In addition, the ATENEA SW test-bench developed in the project for algorithm validation is a valuable asset to the project, providing a development environment for Multisensor Navigation Systems integrating GNSS and other sensors such as INS or LiDAR.

The ATENEA concept is not only innovative but also very oriented to actual user needs, providing a unique enabler for the user market in a professional receiver and integrated systems. Links to the High End Professional Receiver Prototype projects will be established to facilitate this integration.

Objectives

The goal of the ATENEA project is to:

• develop an advanced technology concept for seamless navigation at the centimetre-level, regardless of the environment;
• integrate the complementary capabilities of GNSS, inertial navigation and object feature-based navigation from LiDAR sensors, thus reducing the costs of the currently expensive LiDAR devices for precise laser scanning;
• demonstrate the concept by implementing the developed algorithms in a dedicated SW simulation platform;
• perform a validation campaign focused on urban environment, including both synthetic and real measurements.

Current state-of-the-art of hybridisation applications will be improved with ultra-tight integration of the inertial sensors, navigation processor and signal processing tracking loops, adding additional robustness under high-user dynamics and SIS signal blockages.

The Galileo signal capabilities will be exploited and errors in the pseudo-range observables will be reduced to the minimum, using dedicated multipath and interference mitigation techniques and taking benefit of the new Galileo L1 MBOC and E5 AltBOC signals.

The different algorithms will be developed and tested in a SW environment, and a field campaign with real data will also be carried out. The developed technologies will be investigated down to a pre-industrialised solution ready to be integrated in a professional receiver.