Performance analysis of a dual-frequency software-defined BeiDou receiver with B1 and B2 signals

Abstract

The Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is one of the fastest emerging Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that offers two civilian navigation signals through its 14 operational satellites as of November 2014. The release of the 2nd version of the BeiDou Interface Control Document (ICD) in December 2013 makes it possible for the researchers worldwide to investigate the performance of the 2nd civilian BeiDou B2 signal along with the legacy BeiDou B1 signal. In this paper, the researchers at the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI) make an effort to analyze the performance of BeiDou B1 and B2 signals in Finland considering the similarities and differences between the signals that affect the final positioning result. The performance analysis is carried out in a software-defined multi-frequency multi-GNSS research receiver developed at FGI. The data collection and the result analysis are carried out in two steps. In the first step, a hardware multifrequency multi-GNSS simulator is utilized to verify the performance of the developed software-defined receiver. Afterwards, in the second step, the performance evaluation of BeiDou B1 and B2 signals is carried out with live data sets.