Implementation of Multichannel GPS Receiver
Baseband Modules
Kota Solomon Raju1, Y. Pratap1,2, Virendra Patel1,2, Gaurav Kumar1, S.M.M. Naidu2,
Amit Patwardhan2, Rabinder Henry2, and P. Bhanu Prasad1
1
Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CEERI)/Council of Scientific
and Industrial research (CSIR) Pilani-333031
2
International Institute of Information Technology Pune
solomon@ceeri.ernet.in,
{pratap.sost.iiit,virendra369,gauravpride1985}@gmail.com,
{mohans,amitp}@isquareit.ac.in, henrysal2000@gmail.com,
bhanu@ceeri.ernet.com
Abstract. Global Positioning Systems are mainly used for finding the location
of an object across the globe. GPS receivers can be implemented by using soft-
ware defined radio techniques. In this paper, hardware implementation of base
band (acquisition and tracking) modules of a GPS receiver using system genera-
tor 9.2 has been carried out. The implementation will be tested on Lyrtech
(small form factor-software defined radio) platform which consists of 3 layers.
The upper layer being the radio frequency (ISM band receiver) layer, middle
layer is the ADACMasterIII layer and the last is digital processing (DSP) layer.
The data transfer between the FPGA Virtex4 SX35 and DSP module is done us-
ing a TMS320DM6446 Davinci processor. Generation of 17MHz Intermediate
frequency from the RF signal received by the GPS receiver has been achieved.
Currently the process of building the base band modules of acquisition and
tracking are in progress. Acquisition is being implemented using parallel code
phase search algorithm. This is performed by using FFT. Tracking module is
implemented by using Costas loop and Delay Lock Loop (DLL). First the base
band modules are being made in simulink and simulation results will be tested.
Once this is achieved, real time hardware implementation will be done. The re-
sults will lead to the development of indigenous GPS receivers with single and
multiple channels within the same hardware with reconfiguration. Also it is
adaptive for consistent receiving and tracking of the signals.
Keywords: GPS, Base band, Acquisition, Tracking, Software defined radio,
Parallel code phase search, FFT, Costas loop, Delay lock loop.
1 Introduction
Global positioning system is a satellite based navigation system which was started in
1973. GPS applications include surveying, space navigation, automatic vehicle moni-
toring, emergency services dispatching, and mapping and geographic information
system geo referencing [1]. At present there are 32 GPS satellites revolving around
D.C. Wyld et al. (Eds.): Advances in Computer Science, Eng. & Appl., AISC 166, pp. 817–824.
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818 K.S. Raju et al.
the globe. Out of these, 24 satellites are currently divided into six orbits and each orbit
has four satellites. Each of these orbits makes an inclination angle of 55⁰ with earth’s
equator. Each of these orbits are separated from each other by 60⁰ thus completing the
entire 360⁰.Each satellite rotates around the earth two times in a sidereal day in their
respective orbit having a radius of approximately 26550km [2]. This paper discusses
digital base band blocks of GPS receivers and algorithms used in implementation of
acquisition and tracking modules. This paper also discusses about the SFF-SDR board
which is used for the digital GPS receiver implementation.
2 GPS Signal Structure
A GPS satellite transmits the GPS signal and it is received by the antenna of the GPS
receiver. The GPS signals are transmitted on two radio frequencies in the UHF band.
The UHF band covers the frequency band from 500MHz to 3 GHz. These frequencies
are referred to as L1 and L2 and are derived from a common frequency of 10.23MHz
[3]. A GPS signal consists of four main components. These are Coarse Acquisition
code, Navigation data, Carrier frequency and Doppler frequency shift.
3 Digital Multichannel GPS Receiver
Once the signal is captured by the antenna of a GPS receiver, through the radio fre-
quency chain the input signal is amplified to proper amplitude and the frequency is
converted to desired frequency [2]. Now ADC is used for the digitization of the sig-
nal. Once the digital signal is obtained it is down converted to a required intermediate
frequency (IF). The below figure shows the multichannel GPS receiver.
Fig. 1. Multichannel GPS receiver blocks
The IF is then sent to the first digital baseband module i.e. Acquisition module.
Acquisition module helps in finding out from which satellite the signal is coming. The
tracking module helps in finding out the phase transition of the navigation data [2].
The navigation data gives us information of the orbit of a satellite. From the naviga-
tion module we obtain the pseudo-range and the ephemeris data, which gives us the
information about the satellite positions.
Implementation of Multichannel GPS Receiver Baseband Modules 819
4 Acquisition Module
The main purpose of acquisition is to determine visible satellites and coarse values of
carrier frequency and code phase of the satellite signals.
Algorithms used for implementing acquisition and their comparison [3].
Table 1. Execution time for each of the three implemented acquisition algorithms
Algorithm Execution Time Repetitions Complexity
Serial Search 87ms 41943 Low
Parallel frequency
10ms 1023 Medium
Space search
Parallel code
1ms 41 High
Phase search
4.1 Parallel Code Phase Search Acquisition Algorithm
The goal of the acquisition is to perform a correlation with the incoming signal and a
PRN (pseudo random noise) code. The below figure shows the parallel code phase
acquisition algorithm [4].
Fig. 2. Parallel code phase search acquisition
Demodulation and dispreading are performed in the parallel code phase acquisition.
One provides the demodulation carrier and the other provides the dispreading code [5].
The two main operations performed in the above mentioned algorithm are demodu-
lation and dispreading. Initially a local oscillator generates a local carrier replica and
its 90º phase shifted signal. These signals are multiplied by the incoming digitized
intermediate frequency signal. This generates the I (in phase) signal and the Q (qua-
drature) signal respectively .All the energy is stored in the In-phase signal. The I and
Q signals are combined to form a complex input signal to the DFT function.
(1)
820 K.S. Raju et al.
Next comes the dispreading of the signal. The generated PRN code is transformed
into the frequency domain and the result is complex conjugated. The Fourier trans-
form of the input is multiplied with the Fourier transform of the PRN code. Actually
circular cross correlation is performed. The result of the multiplication is transformed
into the time domain by an inverse Fourier transform. The absolute value of the out-
put of the inverse Fourier transform represents the correlation between the input and
the PRN code. If the peak is present in the correlation, the index of this peak marks
the PRN code phase of the incoming signal [3].
If we take two finite length sequences x (n) and y (n), both with length N, the DFT
can be computed as:
N
/N
X k x n e (2)
N /N
Y k y n e (3)
The circular cross correlation between two finite length sequences x (n) and y (n) both
with length N and with periodic repetitions is computed as:
N N
1 1
z n x m y m n x m y m n (4)
N N
After omitting the scaling factor 1/N, the discrete N-point Fourier transform of z (n)
can be expressed as
/ (5)
/ / (6)
Where
= Discrete Fourier transform of the finite length sequences x (n)
= Discrete Fourier transform of the finite length sequences y (n)
X =Complex conjugate of X (k)
= Discrete N-point Fourier transform of
The code phase and the carrier frequency parameters are further sent to the Tracking
module for further refining.
5 Tracking
The main purpose of tracking is to refine the coarse values of the code phase and the
frequency and to keep track of these as the signal properties changes over time. It
demodulates the incoming signal to obtain the 50Hz navigation data bits.
Implementation of Multichannel GPS Receiver Baseband Modules 821
The tracking mainly consists of two parts.
1. Code tracking (DLL)
2. Carrier tracking(PLL)
The below figure explains the complete tracking module [3].
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the combined DLL and PLL tracking loops
Code Tracking
The code tracking loop used in GPS receivers is a delay lock loop (DLL) called an
early minus late tracking loop. Here also the DLL discriminator provides the neces-
sary feedback required to ensure the replica signal is always with the incoming signal.
The main purpose of the code tracking lop is to keep the track of the code phase of a
specific code in the signal. The o/p of the code tracking loop is a perfectly aligned
replica of the code. The reason to use DLL is to correlate the I/P signal with three
replicas of the code. [Early, Late, and Prompt]. The incoming C/A code is down con-
verted to baseband by multiplying the incoming signal with a perfectly aligned local
replica of the carrier wave.
Carrier Tracking
As shown in figure 2, Costas Phase Loop measures the phase error between incoming
and local generated carrier, after loop filter the error will be used to adjust frequency
of a local oscillator. Costas loop is insensitive to both 180° phase shifts and phase
822 K.S. Raju et al.
transitions caused due to navigation bits. The I (in) phase arm of this loop keeps all
the energy as given below [3].
1 1
cos cos cos cos 2 (7)
2 2
= phase difference between the phase of the input signal and the phase of the local
replica of the carrier phase.
When multiplication is performed in the quadrature arm the above equation
changes to:
1 1
sin sin sin sin 2 (8)
2 2
After low pass filtering the following two signals remain as:
1
cos (9)
2
1
sin (10)
2
Phase error of the local carrier phase replica is:
1
sin
2 tan (11)
1
cos
2
The phase error is reduced when correlation in the quadrature phase arm is zero hav-
ing the maximum value in the In-phase arm.
tan (12)
6 Implementation of GPS Receiver on Lyrtech SFF-SDR Board
The SFF-SDR board is conceived and designed to be used in the development of the
application in the field of software defined radio. The board is composed of three
different platforms: Digital Processing Module, ADACMasterIII, RF Module. The
digital processing module uses a Virtex-4 SX35FPGA and a TMS320DM6446SoC to
implement custom IP and acceleration functions with varying requirements from one
protocol to another supported on the same hardware.The ADACMasterIII is equipped
with dual channel analog to digital and digital to analog converters.The RF module
covers a variety of frequency ranges in transmission and reception. The interface
between DSP and FPGA is performed by using TMS320DM6446SoC Davinci
processor .The below figure shows the flow of the SFF-SDR board[6].
Implementation of Multichannel GPS Receiver Baseband Modules 823
Fig. 2. Design flow of the SFF-SDR board
7 Results and Future Work
We have been able to generate 17MHz Intermediate Frequency required for our
board.
Fig. 3. 17MHz Intermediate Frequency
After generating IF the next task is to implement the Acquisition and Tracking
module.
8 Conclusion
This implementation will lead to the development of indigenous GPS receivers with
single and multiple channels within the same hardware with reconfiguration.
824 K.S. Raju et al.
References
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33. Wiley-Interscience (2005)
3. Borre, K., Akos, Nicolaj, Rinder, Jensen: A Software Defined GPS and Galileo Receiver,
Birkhauser, p. 17, 82, 85, 88 (2007)
4. Li, C., Qian, Y., Lu, M., Feng, Z.: The design and implementation of GPS software
simulation platform, p. 4. University of Tsinghua, Beijing (2008)
5. Hamza, G., Zekry, A., Motawie, I.: Implementation of a complete GPS receiver using
Simulink. IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, 45 (2009)
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Platform (October 2008)
