No GPS No Problem: Exploiting Cellular OFDM-Based Signals for Accurate Navigation

This article presents a receiver that could exploit downlink orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based cellular signals to navigate opportunistically to meter-level accuracy in a real-world GPS-denied environment. The proposed receiver exploits signals from multiple logical antenna ports simultaneously, which dramatically improves the receiver's sensitivity. The efficacy of the proposed receiver is demonstrated experimentally in an environment under intentional GPS jamming, in which the ground vehicle-mounted receiver navigated for 5 km in 180 s. The receiver was able to acquire and track signals from seven long-term evolution (LTE) eNodeBs, one of which was more than 25 km away, achieving a 2-D position root mean-squared error (RMSE) of 2.6 m.