Obscuration, as well as the reflection and diffraction of signals, known as multipath, is one of the major sources of errors in a GNSS receiver. Multipath can cause timing errors from few tens of nanoseconds to hundreds of nanoseconds based on the environment the receiver is operating in. The characterization and study of multipath, although complex, is very important, as its effects need to be compensated for, in order to get accurate positioning or timing results.

The objective of this presentation is to illustrate the impact of multipath on GNSS timing receivers in dense urban areas. We plan to show results for both simulated and real urban environments. The simulated environments, used, are models of real city scenes, where we use ray tracing mechanisms to model a real environment. In addition, we evaluate how well the city models, in simulated environments, match the results obtained from actual field data.

Authors:
Eleftherios Christos Drosinos (akis.drosinos@spirent.com) - Spirent Communications 
Ajay Vemuru (Ajay.Vemuru@spirent.com) - Spirent Communications 
Tim Frost (tim.frost@calnexsol.com) - Calnex Solutions