GNSS Receiver Developed on a SDR Platform Withstands High Accelerations and Speeds

This paper introduces and evaluates a GNSS receiver which has, on the one hand, the ability to operate in environments where velocities and accelerations are a challenge for regular receivers (such as those embedded in satellites or sounding rockets) and on the other hand, it does not have a specific hardware dependence due its Software Defined Radio (SDR) implementation approach. It allows moving to the software side components of the receiver that traditionally have been implemented in the bare silicon. Furthermore, the flexibility of SDR technology jointly with the independence of nowadays stock-limited ASICs was validated as a feasible solution for a non-conventional and highly demanded GNSS navigation scenario. The non-conventional navigation scenario proposed is the flight of a rotation-stabilized sounding rocket. Results show that the algorithm and its proposed implementation are able to provide a valid navigation solution even under demanding accelerations, dozens of times the earth gravity, thus validating the SDR receiver approach for this application.