Indoor Propagation Effects on ToA Bias for Joint GNSS and Terrestrial Radio Based Localization

The time based localization utilizing cellular communication networks has been investigated as a complementation to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for critical scenarios, like indoor or urban canyon areas. By suitable Hybrid Data Fusion (HDF) algorithms which combine the information from GNSS and terrestrial cellular networks, the estimated position accuracy can be improved. However, the wave propagation characteristics for joint GNSS and terrestrial mobile radio based localization as application has not been studied yet. Therefore, a measurement campaign for GNSS at 1.51 GHz and terrestrial radio at 5.2 GHz was performed. In this paper, an analysis of the outdoor to indoor channel for the joint localization as application is presented. It turns out to be that the Time of Arrival (ToA) bias, which is the difference between the geometric distance and the distance propagated by the first incoming wave, is depending on the elevation angle of incoming rays seen from the building to the transmitter. A comparison between two carrier frequencies is addressed.