The MBOC Modulation: The Final Touch to the Galileo Frequency and Signal Plan

Abstract

The road to the signals Galileo has today as a baseline has been tedious and long, but has followed a logic from the start. From the very beginning, one of the main challenges that Galileo set for itself was to offer three wide band signals, satisfying the requirements of mass market and pushing the potential performance to its natural limits. The historical Agreement of 2004 between the US and the EC impacted the initially planned signals but has intensified the cooperation between Galileo and GPS. The final touch to the Galileo signal plan was achieved in 2006 when the Working Group on GPS and Galileo Compatibility and Interoperability finally agreed upon the great interest in a new modulation for the E1/L1 frequency, namely the Multiplex Binary Offset Carrier. Galileo has thus accomplished the original objective of providing three wide band signals for the civilian GNSS community.

GNSS Signals Acquisition and Tracking in Unfavorable Environment

“…CBOC(6,1,1/11,+), TMBOC(6,1,4/33) and CBCS(20%) ACFs all present a sharper principal peak and have side peaks with smaller levels compared to those of BOC(1,1). These advantages are due to the amount of power translated towards higher frequencies [3], [5], [48].…”

Multi-GNSS Receiver for Aerospace Navigation and Positioning Applications

“…With these parallel developments in mind and as a result of Europe's and USA's efforts towards Galileo-GPS interoperability, the future Galileo E1 and GPS L1 C signals will be compatible (Avila-Rodriguez, J. et al, 2007), enabling receiver simplification and increased availability at a low cost.…”

Unambiguous Processing Techniques of Binary Offset Carrier Modulated Signals

“…It moves signal energy away from the band center and thus achieves a higher degree of spectral separation between BOC modulated signals and other signals which use traditional binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation, such as the GPS C/A code, in order to get a more efficient sharing of the L-band spectrum. Besides, many studies (Avila-Rodriguez, et al, 2007;Betz, 2001;Hein, et al, 2006) show that BOC modulation also provides better inherent resistance to multipath and narrowband interference.…”