Estimation of Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System Receiver’s Position Accuracy in Terms of Statistical Parameters

Evaluating the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) receiver’s position accuracy in terms of statistical parameters like Distance Root Mean Square (DRMS), Twice DRMS (2DRMS), Circular Error Probability (CEP), and Spherical Error Probability (SEP) is one of the better approaches to determine the receiver’s position accuracy. NavIC is an Indian regional Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to provide accurate position services. And it has an individual satellite constellation with seven satellites having a footprint over the Indian subcontinent whereas the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite constellation has 24 satellites covering the entire globe. NavIC’s IGS (IRNSS-GPS-SBAS) receiver is capable of receiving signals from 7 Indian Regional Navigation Satellite Systems (IRNSS) satellites, 12 GPS satellites, and 2 Satellite-Based Augment System (SBAS) Satellites. As part of the NavIC user segment’s evaluation, estimation of the NavIC receiver’s position accuracy is an absolute necessity and will be a preliminary step towards the research of Differential NavIC. The differential techniques need two NavIC stations, one used as a reference station and another used as a user station. The high-level hypothesis in NavIC position accuracy is similar to the GPS accuracy. An attempt is made in this article to compare the NavIC Receiver’s IRNSS signal position accuracy in two different scenarios. In the first scenario, the reference station was set up at the location whose positions are accurately known and obtained from the Survey of India (SOI). In the second scenario, the reference station was set up at the location whose position was computed using a Root Mean Square (RMS) average of 72 hours of data logging. The user station in both the above scenarios was set up in the moving vehicle. The differential position technique used in the result analysis in this article is the initial footstep towards estimating the NavIC receiver’s position accuracy.