Noncoherent Integration for Signal Detection: Analysis Under Model Uncertainties

The performance of postdetection integration (PDI) techniques for the detection of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals in the presence of uncertainties in frequency offsets, noise variance, and unknown data-bits is studied. It is shown that the conventional PDI techniques are generally not robust to uncertainty in the data-bits and/or the noise variance. Two new modified PDI techniques are proposed, and they are shown to be robust to these uncertainties. The receiver operating characteristics (ROC) and sample complexity performance of the PDI techniques in the presence of model uncertainties are analytically derived. It is shown that the proposed methods significantly outperform existing methods, and hence they could become increasingly important as the GNSS receivers attempt to push the envelope on the minimum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for reliable detection.