GNSS satellite visibility simulation from Google Earth

• This project generates virtual fisheye zenith images from Google Earth at arbitrary locations and automatically determines GNSS visibility
• This can be used to evaluate GNSS multipath in urban areas and as a reference for LOS/NLOS satellites

Vehicle Driving Data

• Virtual fisheye video generated from GNSS data mounted on the vehicle included in the dataset

Virtual fisheye image

fisheye.mp4

Virtual fisheye image with GNSS satellites

fisheye_satellite.mp4

Virtual fisheye image with LOS/NLOS determination

fisheye_satellite_nlos.mp4

Requirements

• MATLAB (>R2022a)
  • Image Processing Toolbox (for satellite_visibility_xxx.m)
• Google Earth Pro
• MatRTKLIB

How to use

Setup

• Install Google Earth Pro
• Clone or download MatRTKLIB and add to path in MATLAB
• Clone or download ge-gnss-visibility

Fisheye Image Generation

1. Run generate_kml_kinematic.m or generate_kml_static.m

• ge_fov160.kml is generated

2. Open ge_fov160.kml in Google Earth Pro

• Check Photorealistic and Terrain in Layers
• Note: To start Movie Maker, you must exit the tour mode. Please press the X button on the slider in the lower left to exit tour mode.

3. Tools->Movie Maker

• Select tour fisheye_fov160
• Enter the name of the file to save to
• Video parameter: Custom
• Picture size: 1200 x 1200
• Frames per second: 1.0
• Output configuration
  • For kinematic data: MJPEG (.mov)
  • For static data: JPEG image sequence (.jpg)

4. Click Create Movie

• Usually this process takes quite a while!
  • In my experience, running Google Earth in a Linux (Ubuntu) environment is much faster than running it in Windows
  • On Windows, it is faster to use OpenGL instead of DirectX as the graphics mode for Google Earth
  • The type of graphics card you have can also affect performance

5. Run satellite_visibility_kinematic.m or satellite_visibility_static.m

• Virtual fisheye image/movie is generated

Citation

If you use this project in your research or paper, please cite the following article [link].

@inproceedings{suzuki2015simulation,
  title={Simulation of GNSS satellite availability in urban environments using Google Earth},
  author={Suzuki, Taro and Kubo, Nobuaki},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the ION 2015 Pacific PNT Meeting},
  pages={1069--1079},
  year={2015}
}