Performance assessment of an ARM-based dual-constellation GNSS software receiver

In modern communications, the flexibility is a key point in the implementation of receivers because it eases the development of new products and the introduction of new features in already existing ones. In the silicon-based products the extra-cost associated to the introduction of a new functionality is mainly due to the development process rather than the extra silicon and components. On the other hand, full reconfigurability can be obtained far cheaply through a software based implementation: the well-known Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) approach. Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers make no exception to this fact, and, in the last years, several examples of software GNSS receivers have been published in the literature. In this paper, the development of a new real-time dual-constellation GPS+Galileo SDR receiver on a low cost ARM-based embedded platform is described. The impact of implementation and optimization choices on the achieved performance is evaluated and compared to other two PC-based SDR receivers.