GNSS satellite visibility simulation from Google Earth

March 24, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

  • 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

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2763cd03-9e3a-4305-b6f8-2b7850cdd04a

Virtual fisheye image with GNSS satellites

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/844e4be2-c8af-4471-b917-f9183cc6178c

Virtual fisheye image with LOS/NLOS determination

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1669d099-7bd0-4dbc-af50-b5861e4ec837

Requirements

How to use

Setup

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}
}