Investigation of diffraction effects in GNSS using ray tracing channel modelling: Preliminary results

Multipath propagation between satellite and receiver constitutes an important impairment in satellite navigation systems. To address this problem, an extensive investigation on the propagation channel is required. In this paper, the satellite-to-earth channel is modelled deterministically by using the ray tracing method in combination with an accurate 3-dimensional description of the environment in which the receiver is located. Moreover, this work focuses on the influence of diffraction propagation phenomena based on the Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD). For a typical GNSS reference station environment we show different diffracted rays and power delay profiles. We find a good agreement between the measurements and simulation results.