GPS Digital Tracking Loops Design for High Dynamic Launching Vehicles

This paper describes the design of digital tracking loops for GPS receivers in a high dynamics environment, without external aiding. We adopted the loop structure of a frequency-locked loop (FLL)-assisted phase-locked loop (PLL) and design it to track accelerations steps, as those occurring in launching vehicles. We used a completely digital model of the loop where the FLL and PLL parts are jointly designed, as opposed to the classical discretized analog model with separately designed FLL and PLL. The new approach does not increase the computational burden. We performed simulations and real RF signal experiments of a fixed-point implementation of the loop, showing that reliable tracking of steps up to 40 g can be achieved