Opportunistic use of GNSS Signals to Characterize the Environment by Means of Machine Learning Based Processing

GNSS is widely used to provide positions in an absolute reference frame in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV), where GNSS is merged with the information provided by other sensors. Even if the main goal of GNSS signal processing is the positioning, multifrequency signals are a rich source of information about the propagation environment surrounding the mobile vehicle. In urban and harsh environment, situational awareness is essential to tailor the operations and take proper countermeasure to harsh propagation conditions. Given this framework the present paper will describe the use of GNSS as signals of opportunity for the characterization of the operative environment by processing the GNSS observables through Machine Learning (ML) algorithms that can be used as efficient features extractors. The paper will present some case studies of operational scenarios for UGVs and for a static monitoring station, showing how through combining DSP techniques with both unsupervised and supervised ML algorithms (K-means classes, Support Vector Machines) it is possible to retrieve the information about the propagation scenario for multipath, interference and atmospheric limitations.