The RF & SatNav laboratory has a long history of contributing to the open source development of receiver architectures for GPS/GNSS.

textbook cover"Software Defined FPS Galileo Receiver Single Frequency."Original GPS Open Source SDR         

Much of the foundation was established with the co-authored textbook entitled: “A Software-Defined GPS and Galileo Receiver: A Single-Frequency Approach” by Borre, Akos, Bertelsen, Rinder, and Jensen. That effort provided an open source GPS receiver where all the signal processing within a GPS receiver was implemented in Matlab.  This code base opened up an obtuse complex system into its technical components to allow engineers and students to explore various architectures in receiver design.

The RF & SatNav Laboratory expanded this software tool suite to include a GPS/GNSS front end based around the SiGe 4110/4120 GPS/GNSS radio ASIC.  This device included a GPS/GNSS antenna and cable and would connect to a host computer to log the raw IF samples from GPS/GNSS in any environment or any conditions to user which to work with.  The device was designed and fabricated out of a request from a small handful of users but had been in demand across the world.  It has served as the core of various research projects and academic undertaking since its initial development. 

Latest Collect of GPS/GNSS Open Source SDR

Building on the success of the open source GPS code base, numerous individuals within the RF & SatNav Laboratory adapted that code for the other GNSS signals and frequency.  This culminated during when Dr. Yafeng Li, then a visiting research scholar with the RF & SatNav Laboratory (now an Associate Professor in the School of Automation at the Beijing Information Science and Technology University) took this collection of code bases and took the lead to develop a collection of open source GNSS receiver architecture code bases.  These efforts continue to be maintained, built upon, and tested with the latest culmination resulting in the Institute of Navigation International Technical Meeting 2022 conference publication: “A Collection of SDRs for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)” by Joan Miguel Bernabeu Frias, Fernando Palafox, Yafeng Li, Dennis M. Akos, University of Colorado Boulder.  

These resources bring in an open source basis of SDRs for the collection of satellite navigation signals.  Efforts will continue to build upon this collection of software tools for the GNSS community.