Design and implementation of real-time software radio for anti-interference GPS/WAAS sensors

Adaptive antenna array processing is widely known to provide significant anti-interference capabilities within a Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receiver. A main challenge in the quest for such receiver architecture has always been the computational/processing requirements. Even more demanding would be to try and incorporate the flexibility of the Software-Defined Radio (SDR) design philosophy in such an implementation. This paper documents a feasible approach to a real-time SDR implementation of a beam-steered GNSS receiver and validates its performance. This research implements a real-time software receiver on a widely-available x86-based multi-core microprocessor to process four-element antenna array data streams sampled with 16-bit resolution. The software receiver is capable of 12 channels all-in-view Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) array processing capable of rejecting multiple interferers. Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions assembly coding and multithreaded programming, the key to such an implementation to reduce computational complexity, are fully documented within the paper. In conventional antenna array systems, receivers use the geometry of antennas and cable lengths known in advance. The documented CRPA implementation is architected to operate without extensive set-up and pre-calibration and leverages Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) to provide adaptation in both the frequency and space domains. The validation component of the paper demonstrates that the developed software receiver operates in real time with live Global Positioning System (GPS) and Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) L1 C/A code signal. Further, interference rejection capabilities of the implementation are also demonstrated using multiple synthetic interferers which are added to the live data stream.