GNSS signal acquisition in harsh urban environments

In urban environment, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are impaired by non-line-of-sight fading conditions and by the presence of potential sources of electromagnetic disturbance. This paper analyzes the impact of the wireless propagation medium and aggregate network interference by measuring the degradation of the acquisition performance expressed in terms of receiver operating characteristics (ROC). The presented framework allows to realistically evaluate the GNSS acquisition performance by jointly considering the effect of radio signal propagation conditions, interfering nodes spatial distribution, and other relevant environment dependent parameters. By means of numerical examples we elucidate the need for alternative positioning techniques in harsh urban environments.