A high-precision and efficient algorithm for space-based ADS-B signal separation

Space-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) receivers can cover thousands of aircraft, each transmitting 6 ⋅ 2 signals per second. As a result, ADS-B signals are very prone to overlap. When the number of aircraft covered by a receiver reaches 3,000, about 90 % of the signals will be overlapping. Overlapped signals can reduce the decoding accuracy of receivers, so that aircraft information cannot be accurately transmitted to the air traffic control (ATC) surveillance system, hence threatening aviation flight safety. It is necessary to propose signal separation algorithms for space-based ADS-B systems. An orthogonal projection linear constrained minimum variance (OPLCMV) algorithm is proposed, which can separate two signals simultaneously based on the linearly constrained minimum variance algorithm by exploiting the characteristics of overlapped signals. Compared with the state-of-the-art extended projection algorithm and the fast independent component analysis algorithm, the OPLCMV method has a higher decoding accuracy for multiple overlapping signals with a small direction difference of arrival or frequency shift. Moreover, the OPLCMV algorithm has a low computational complexity when the number of overlapped signal sources is less than seven.