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GPS receiver design

By allankliu
Created 09/04/2008 - 11:44

Technology avl Design gps localizer tracking

GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) is a common name for all of the satellite based
positioning systems, which are GPS (Global Positioning System) from US, Galileo from EU,
GLONASS from Russia, and CNSS (Compass Navigation Satellite System) from China. GPS is
the first and most popular one among these systems.

After 911, every cellular phone sold in US has to support positioning services. Meanwhile the
navigation devices are popular due to fast growing of private cars and mobile phones in the
emerging countries. Thanks to Google, more and more consumers can easily connect their GPS
devices to the Google web services for navigation, virtual sight viewing or satisfying their
curiosity. All of these services are available free of charge.

Google's Inspiration

Google is a great web innovator.

Everybody knows about Google
Map and Google Earth. And its
competitors like Microsoft and
Yahoo have to catch up. However
Google is not the inventor of the
web GIS. Actually web GIS has
been available for a long time.
Never the less, Google promotes
the web GIS with its great influence
in the Internet, and furthermore
deliveries the free services in a
quick and elegant way (AJAX).
More and more companies and
developers have identified the
business opportunities by
integrating the existing navigation
technologies and web GIS. The new
successful stories spread the world and gain the attentions of the venture capitals. As a result,
the GPS ecosystem becomes highly competitive and exciting.

Competitive Market

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A successful GPS application is made up of GPS terminals, map data services and service
centers. That means the GPS applications are blending businesses involve Internet, mobile
terminal, mobile network, automotives, and consumer electronics. More and more industries are
looking for the new business opportunities in the navigation and location aware services via
merging and acquisitions. It is a clear trend that the map data and services are the key factors of
a business success. As usual, the silicon suppliers and device manufacturers have to fight for
the market share and making devices cheaper. The startup companies must release products
with unique features. Some suppliers offer dual mode or tri-mode satellite positioning chipsets
for GPS, Galileo and CNSS. Some independent RFIC vendors team up with the software
suppliers to promote the software GPS solutions in reduced BOM cost. Some other vendors are
promoting the one chip RFIC for all RF features including Bluetooth, FM radio and GPS.

GPS Receiver Architecture

GPS works by making one way range measurements from the receiver to the satellites. In order
to arrive at a position fix we must know precisely where the satellites are and how far we are
from them. These data are available to the receiver by reading the data message from each
satellite which provides a precise description of the satellite orbit and timing information which is
used to determine when the signal was transmitted by the satellite. Each satellite transmits on 2
frequencies in the L band (L1=1575.42 MHz and L2=1227.6 MHz). Each satellite transmits a
unique CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) code on these frequencies. On top of this the
signal is modulated with a 50 Hz data message which provides precise timing information and
orbital parameters. Since the receiver knows which sequence is assigned to each satellite it
knows what satellite the data is coming from. The receiver creates a copy of the sequence and
correlates or integrates the received signal multiplied by this copy over a period of time (in our
case 1 ms). The particular sequence transmitted by each satellite has been chosen to reduce
the chance that a receiver will track a satellite transmitting a different PRN sequence. For more
detail on correlators see the Zarlink chipset documentation or some of the other references.

The attached figure is a

traditional GPS receiver
architect (from Zarlink). It is
made up of antenna, RF/IF
section and a base band
processing unit, which usually
has correlators and an
embedded processor. The
host processor talks to the
embedded processor in an
industrial standard protocol
called NMEA (National Marine
Electronics Association) or optional proprietary protocols. The physical links between the
processors might be a standard UART, USB or Bluetooth. The communication over USB and
Bluetooth has to simulate a virtual serial port to talk with high level application software. The
default baud rate of NMEA is 4800bps, the higher rate doesn't make sense.

Antenna

Because of miniaturization and multi-functional

requirements, the designer faces to more and more
challenges in antenna design. These factors include
human interference, noises from embedded processors

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and external interferences. It is better to copy the

reference design from the application notes for an
inexperienced engineer. Never the less, GPS antenna
design is still easier than the mobile phone antenna
design. We know, the latest mobile phone has to work
on 800MHz, 900MHz and 1800MHz with PA and faces to the big noises inside.

The most commonly used antennas in GPS are the Helix and the patch antenna. Patch antenna
has strong direction selectivity, which is used in most of the external GPS mice. The Helix
antenna is much suitable for handheld GPS, which offers broader antenna angle, and it works
better than patch antenna when it is close to human.

There are some off-the-shelf antennas available in the market. Most of them are external
antennas, which offer better performance.

Sarantel offers GPS antenna in full Balun design, which offers 360 degree antenna reception
and highly frequency selectivity, and most of the noises can be eliminated. This company also
offers the bulk ceramic antenna as the smallest antenna in the world.

Mr. Mark Kesauer offers an inexpensive external GPS antenna design on Circuit Cellar. The
PDF document is available on here [1]. This design uses commonly available components and
materials.

RFIC

The RF parts of a GPS from different suppliers are slightly different but most of these ICs are
sharing same concept. The RF section includes LNA, filter, PLL and BPSK demodulator.
Maxim’s MAX2769 demonstrates the general RF IC for GPS receiver.

The RF front-end of a GPS receiver first amplifies the weak incoming signal with a low-noise
amplifier (LNA), and then downconverts the signal to a low intermediate frequency (IF) of
approximately 4MHz. This downconversion is accomplished by mixing the input RF signal with
the local oscillator signal using one or two mixers. The resulting analog IF signal is converted to
a digital IF signal by the analog-to-digital converter (ADC).

The MAX2769 integrates all these functions (LNA, mixer, and ADC), thus significantly reducing
the development time for applications. The device offers a choice of two LNAs: one LNA
features a very-low, 0.9dB noise figure, 19dB of gain, and -1dBm IP3, for use with passive
antennas; the other LNA has a 1.5dB noise figure with slightly lower gain and power
consumption, and a slightly higher IP3, for use with an active antenna.

There is a provision for external filtering at RF after the amplifier. The signal is then
downconverted directly using the integrated 20-bit, sigma-delta, fractional-N frequency
synthesizer together with a 15-bit integer divider to achieve virtually any desired IF between zero
and 12MHz. A wide selection of possible IF filtering choices accommodates different schemes,
such as those of Galileo.

The overall gain from RF input to IF output can be tuned or automatically controlled over a 60dB
to 115dB range. The output can be chosen as analog, CMOS, or limited differential. The internal
ADC has a selectable output of one to three bits. The integrated reference oscillator enables
operation with either a crystal or a temperature-compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO), and any
input reference frequency from 8MHz to 44MHz can be used.

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Correlators

The correlators of GPS are the essential parts of the whole system of bit synchronization and
decoding. The correlators will feed the raw digit output to the embedded processor to acquire,
confirm, pull-in, track the satellites, and translate into NMEA protocol, which the host controller
can understand.

The correlators can be implemented in hardware and software. Recently, the number of
correlators increases dramatically. The early product from Zarlink has 12 channel correlators.
The newer SiRF-II has 1920 correlators inside, and the latest SiRF-III has over equivalent 200K
correlators to reduce the TTFF. MediaTek (MTK) Taiwan also released a low cost GPS chip,
which has 32 channel correlators inside. I use a MTK based GPS for my own testing purpose. It
works fine, although I still expect more accuracy from the device. However, its performance is
good enough as a consumer class GPS receiver.

Some open source projects released the FPGA based correlators. On the other hand, the
correlators can be implemented in a FFT based software algorithm, which is referred as software
GPS and cited in an application note from Maxim.

Embedded Processor

The silicon suppliers are trying to promote their own platforms in GPS. The task for the
embedded processor is calculation and tracking the different satellites and interfacing with host
processor in NMEA. If you check the attached NMEA document, you will realize that the
embedded processor has to deal with so many parameters in detail. The requirements for the
embedded processors are big enough memory address space and sufficient processing power
for intensive calculation. The ARM7TDMI is a 32bit core, which offers sufficient memory space
and processing power. The peripherals included UART, USB and Bluetooth have been available
for ARM for a long time. As a result, the latest GPS chips from different suppliers have the
identical trend to select ARM7TDMI as the embedded processor.

There are some key KPIs for the GPS, which might be related to the correlators and software in
the embedded processor.

1. Cold Start: A cold start results when there is no valid Almanac or Ephemeris information
available for the satellite constellation in SRAM, or when the time and/or position
information is NOT known (i.e. starts at 0 in both cases). Also a cold start will be initiated if
an Almanac is valid, but a fix cannot be achieved within 10 minutes of power-up. This could
occur if the receiver position has moved significantly since it was last powered-up, but the
position change and time are NOT initialized by the user
2. Warm Start: A warm start results when there is a valid Almanac, and the initial time and
position are known in SRAM, but the ephemeris is NOT valid (i.e. more than 4 - 6 hours
old).
3. Hot Start: A hot start results when there is a valid Almanac, valid ephemeris (i.e. less than
4 - 6 hours old), and when accurate time and position information are also known in SRAM
(position error less than 100km, time error less than 5 minutes).

Software GPS

If the hardware can be implemented in software, the total cost of a GPS can be reduced.
Different suppliers have different approaches. One solution is merging the embedded processor
to the host processor, so the job is done in the host. In this solution, the basic hardware blocks

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such as correlators are still kept. Some companies call this approach as accelerated software
GPS. The other solution is taking the digitalized signal from IF, and implements the correlators
and decoders in software. We can call it as full software GPS. The software GPS is only
available in commercial licenses on specific chip in linkable library. Sometime the software GPS
license might be more expensive than a low cost IC.

SiRF has acquired the Centrality Atlas, who offers SoC for GPS. Its Atlas is a software GPS
product, running on a 300MHz ARM microprocessor and 200MHz DSP. This chip is the best
seller in automotive navigator. It offers the comparable performance with SiRF-III, with lower
price and media player features.

NXP software also offers Spot GPS software for the host application processors. The Spot GPS
Software is a commercial software package in the form of ANSI C. It is easy to be deployed
since most of the latest smart phones have a 200MHz, even 500MHz processor inside.

There is also an open source GPS project called GPS world, which uses ATMEGA32 for
back-end processing. But this project is not a complete software GPS solution, because it was
built upon a hardware correlators IC from Zarlink. However if you are developing the firmware of
a GPS receiver, it could be the base for your development. In the reference of open source
projects, you can find other software GPS designs.

Modules or DIY

Because GPS is quite sensitive to the environment,

inexperienced designs will ruin the whole project. According to the
field report, the GPS module has quite high failure rate in
production site. Some mobile phone manufacturers tried to
design the GPS by themselves, finally they found their GPS
phone design is totally a fiasco.

The module includes everything and assembly in a can module.

The size is as small as a coin. There are many professional GPS
module suppliers. LeadTek, Holux and other suppliers are
offering SiRF and MTK based solution worldwide.

Application Software

From the point of system software development, the software engineer can consider GPS unit as
a standard serial port. No matter which OS is selected, the serial port is always available, either
in a real RS232 or simulated serial port on USB and Bluetooth. Any person who has experience
of developing UART can develop the GPS application software in NMEA protocol as well.

Finally, the high level application software will combine the map data and coordinates from GPS
and present to the users.

There is an open source project

called Openmoko, which is
sponsored by FIC Taiwan. This
project is basically an ARM920T
(S3C2440) microprocessor based
mobile phone. The GSM/GPRS
module and GPS module are
connected to the serial ports for

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ARM920. The phone is working

like a desktop PC with GPRS
modem and GPS receiver.
Anyway, it is a good project which
you can start up your own GPS
terminals.
The connected GPS project Dash
Express is a derivated project
from Openmoko.

There are also many open source projects available. You always can find the projects in your
favorite languages, Java, Python, C++, .NET and even in web programming languages.

Reference

General Information for GPS

A summary table for 2nd generation GPS chipset. The latest GPS
chipsets are 3rd generation, but the information is still helpful.

[2]

GPS Receiver Information, software and hardware review of GPS

receivers.

[3]

Fastrax Software GPS solution, new software based GPS

solution - GPS cost below 3$.

[4]

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Component

Antenova is a leading developer and supplier of high

performance antennas and RF antenna modules for mobile
handsets, portable devices and laptop computers.

[5]

SuomiNet Support, a professional GPS organization.

[6]

Silicon suppliers

NXP, Infineon, Sony, ST, Atmel, SiGe, SiRF, MediaTek, u-Nav, Zarlink, NemeriX, VLSI, Global
Locate, Javad Navigation. ublox.

Infineon and Global Locate's baby: Hammerhead II GPS

[7]

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Global Locate, acquired by Broadcom

[8]

Sony GPS

[9]

Maxim GPS solution

[10]

SiRF Products

[11]

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ST GPS

[12]

ublox GPS and Galileo position solutions

[13]

u-Nav, acquired by Atheros

[14]

California Eastern Laboratories (CEL) GPS LNA

[15]

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Zarlink GPS

[16]

NeneriX GPS Product Overview

[17]

Module suppliers

Trimble, Motorola, Rockwell, Garmin, Leadtek, Holux, Royaltek, NAVCOM, javad GNSS

Trimble embedded GPS

[18]

NXP mobile platform, including GPS

[19]

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Rockwell Collins: NavStrike 3.3 Munitions Embedded GPS

Module

[20]

Holux GPS module

[21]

NAVCOM GPS products

[22]

GPS Antennas with other products in tracking, GPS, RF,

Wireless and Quick solutions off-the-shelf

[23]

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Novatel Inc.

[24]

Open Source Project

The Open Source GPS project is a 12 channel L1 only receiver.

The software goes from acquisition all the way to processing the
navigation message and producing position and velocity fixes at
a programmable rate of up to 10 Hz. It is capable of doing a cold
start, warm start or hot start depending on the data available.
The source code is written in C and was compiled on a Borland
4.5 C/C++ compiler.

[25]

The GPS World project is the first ATMega32 based GPS

receiver ( back end) that can track satellites and calculate the
navigation solution from raw digital data.

[26]

An Open Source locoGPS Module Coming to iPhone.

[27]

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Web Links from a GPS fan

[28]

This page is meant to list all of the open source and open
hardware GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) projects.
Although most projects currently focus on GPS, we welcome
Galileo and GLONASS projects as well!

[29]

The goal of grGPS is to design a single board receiver that has

an RF input at on end, dedicated to picking up the GPS L1
Signal, and a Baseband interface at the other end, with
baseband samples heading for demodulation. The intent here is
to hook up to the GNU Radio USRP for the baseband
demodulation and signal processing.

[30]

Trademarks

Source URL: http://dev.emcelettronica.com/gps-receiver-design

Links:
[1] http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/pdf/0210036.pdf
[2] http://www.gpspassion.com/Hardware/chipsets.htm
[3] http://gpsinformation.net/
[4] http://www.fastrax.fi/
[5] http://www.antenova.com/
[6] http://www.suominet.ucar.edu/support/index.html
[7] http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/findProductTypeByName.html?query=PMB2525
[8] http://www.globallocate.com/
[9] http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/pro/mobile/gps.html
[10] http://www.maxim-ic.com/solutions/gps/
[11] http://www.sirf.com/products/index.html
[12] http://www.st.com/stonline/products/families/gps/gps.htm
[13] http://www.u-blox.com/products.html

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[14] http://www.atheros.com/pt/gps_index.htm
[15] http://www.cel.com/market.do?command=viewDetails&idApplication=15&group=4
[16] http://www.zarlink.com/cps/rde/xchg/zarlink/hs/71.htm#1245
[17] http://www.nemerix.com/products/index.php
[18] http://www.trimble.com/embeddedsystems/
[19] http://dev.emcelettronica.com/gps-receiver-design#/pip/pip=[pfp=53412]|pp=[t=pfp,i=53412]
[20] http://www.rockwellcollins.com/ecat/gs/NavStrike_3.3.html
[21] http://www.holux.com/JCore/en/products/products_list.jsp?pno=4
[22] http://www.navcomtech.com/Products/GPS/
[23] http://www.laipac.com/antennas_eng.htm
[24] http://www.novatel.com/products/index.htm
[25] http://home.earthlink.net/~cwkelley/
[26] http://ltc.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2006/jma65rt67/jma65rt67/index.htm
[27] http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/iphone-gps/open-source-locogps-module-coming-to-iphone-334562.php"
[28] http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew/gps/
[29] http://gps.psas.pdx.edu/OpenGnssProjects/
[30] http://www.keystoneradio.com/?n=Main.GrGPS

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