Development of a Software-Defined GNSS Simulation Prototype for Advanced Signals Research
Abstract
Global Positioning System (GPS) has become the de-facto standard for precision time transfer. By definition, all signal structure details of the open civilian GPS signals are known and published. This makes them vulnerable to numerous threats One possible solution is to incorporate signal authentication features for future GPS. However, there lacks a hardware platform to verify these features. This thesis proposes a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based GPS waveform prototyping platform that features software-defined all-digital signal synthesis architecture in conjunction with a high-speed Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) as a solution. This work explores synthesizing the GPS L1 C/A signal to analyze the spectral performance of this platform with consideration in FPGA resources.