Prof. Dr. Tony Pratt

graduated with a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Birmingham University, UK. He was on the teaching staff at Loughborough University, UK from 1967 to 1980. He held visiting professorships at Yale University; IIT, New Delhi and University of Copenhagen. In 1980, he joined Navstar Ltd, as Technical Director. In 1995, with Peek plc, he was involved in the formation of Tollstar Ltd, a 5 company consortium developing Electronic Road Tolling. He left Peek in 1997 starting OrbStar Consultants and joined Navstar Systems Ltd as Technical Consultant. He is now Senior Consultant (GPS) with QinetiQ Ltd (since January 2004). He is also Special Professor at the IESSG at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is a Consultant to the UK Government in the development of Galileo Navigation Satellite Systems.

Basics of Satellite Navigation – A Mathematical Approach 1 & 2
Modern GNSS Receiver Techniques

This 3 hour lecture series provides the fundamental mathematical techniques and concepts for position determination in satellite navigation systems. It is primarily focused on GPS but is equally applicable to all GNSS systems which use trilateration (range measurements to the satellites). The course makes use of matrix algebra and differential calculus as these are essential prerequisites for the algorithms in common use in GNSS receivers.

The course covers the extension to least squares location estimates when there are more than the minimum number of required measurements. Kalman filtering techniques are an extension of the concepts developed in this course and are not included.

For the first time, the course also includes the (new) techniques which have been developed for the computation of position when GPS time is only poorly known (to no better than 60 seconds). This case occurs frequency in cell-phone applications when the current time is transmitted from the cell-phone base station infrastructure and cannot be recovered from the GPS transmission as the data signal is too weak to be decoded.”

GNSS and Interference

This course in Interference in GNSS is strongly mathematical in content and is to provide the student with both the understanding and tools necessary to assess and engineer means to control and mitigate interference in Global Navigation Satellite Systems. This subject has become significant with the emergence of many different GNSS systems competing for the same part of the spectrum and simultaneously causing mutual interference. The interference degrades performance at least from acquisition to accuracy, and more. There are also a plethora of sources of interference as the satellite signals when received in terrestrial applications are at very low power levels.

All common satellite signals are analysed for their susceptibility to interference and their potential to be a source (of interference) for other band users. The main tool for this consideration is the Spectral Separation Coefficient (SSC). The course develops a working understanding of this measure.

Examples are given of all the major commonly used satellite signals.

The regulatory background for coordination in the control of GNSS interference is briefly addressed.