Receiver Architecture

Abstract

This chapter discusses the basic architecture of global navigation satellite system (GNSSglobal navigation satellite system (GNSS)) receivers. It starts with a breakdown of the receiver function into individual building blocks along the processing chain (front-end, down conversion, mixers, numerically controlled oscillators, correlators, tracking loops, data demodulation, navigation, user interface), and describes the respective functions. A dedicated section describes selected hardware solutions (example chipsets for front-end and baseband processing, offering different levels of integration and capabilities). Finally, receiver designs performing the signal processing in pure software as well as receivers based on configurable hardware are discussed.