Localization System Based on Enhanced Software GPS Receiver

Abstract

In this paper the enhanced architecture of a novel software GPS receiver is described and an analysis is included of the performance of a software GPS receiver when tracking the GPS signals in challenging environments. In this software receiver design, the focus is on the acquisition and tracking of L1 band C/A code GPS signals used by most civilian applications. The purpose of this work is to develop new acquisition and tracking equipment and algorithms to extract the navigation data bits from the raw GPS signals. The navigation data bits provide all the necessary information to compute the pseudorange between the receiver and the visible satellites and determine the receiver location. The system includes a GPS antenna, an RF front-end, A/D converter and microcontroller connected to PC. This is needed to supply data to the remaining parts of the system. Both MATLAB simulated GPS data and realistic GPS signals are used to verify the performance of the acquisition and tracking programs. Results are included which demonstrate the advantage of the software GPS receiver in tracking the GPS signals in low signal-to-noise or jamming scenario.