A multi-GNSS software-defined receiver: design, implementation, and performance benefits

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) have been experiencing a rapid growth in recent years with the inclusion of Galileo and BeiDou navigation satellite systems. The existing GPS and GLONASS systems are also being modernized to better serve the current challenging applications under harsh signal conditions. Therefore, the research and development of GNSS receivers have been experiencing a new upsurge in view of multi-GNSS constellations. In this article, a multi-GNSS receiver design is presented in various processing stages for three different GNSS systems, namely, GPS, Galileo, and the Chinese BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS). The developed multi-GNSS software-defined receiver performance is analyzed with real static data and utilizing a hardware signal simulator. The performance analysis is carried out for each individual system, and it is then compared against each possible multi-GNSS combination. The true multi-GNSS benefits are also highlighted via an urban scenario test carried out with the hardware signal simulator. In open sky tests, the horizontal 50 % error is approximately 3 m for GPS only, 1.8 to 2.8 m for combinations of any two systems, and 1.4 m when using GPS, Galileo, and BDS satellites. The vertical 50 % error reduces from 4.6 to 3.9 when using all the three systems compared to GPS only. In severe urban canyons, the position error for GPS only can be more than ten times larger, and the solution availability can be less than half of the availability for a multi-GNSS solution.