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Receiver
M. Zahidul H. Bhuiyan, Stefan Sderholm, Sarang Thombre, Laura
Ruotsalainen and Heidi Kuusniemi
Abstract. Satellite-based positioning is undergoing a rapid change. Both the GPS
and the GLONASS systems are being modernized to serve better the current challenging applications in harsh signal conditions. These modernizations include increasing the number of transmission frequencies and changes to the signal components. In addition, the European Galileo and the Chinese BeiDou systems are
currently under development for global operation. Therefore, the research and development of Global Navigation Satellite System receivers in view of these new
upcoming systems has been experiencing a new upsurge. In this paper, the authors
discuss the main functionalities of a GNSS receiver in view of BeiDou satellite
navigation system. While describing the main functionalities of a software defined
BeiDou receiver, the authors also highlight the similarities and differences between the signal characteristics of BeiDou B1 open service signal and the legacy
GPS L1 C/A signal, as they both exhibit similar characteristics in general. In addition, the authors implement a novel acquisition technique for long coherent integration in the presence of NH code modulation in BeiDou D1 signal. Finally, the
authors present a BeiDou-only navigation fix with the implemented softwaredefined BeiDou receiver.
Keywords: BeiDou satellite navigation system software-defined receiver.
1.1 Introduction
The Chinese satellite navigation system BeiDou has a mixed space constellation
that has, when fully deployed, five Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites,
twenty-seven MEO satellites and three Inclined Geosynchronous Satellite Orbit
(IGSO) satellites. The GEO satellites are operating in orbit at an altitude of 35786
kilometers and positioned at 58.75E, 80E, 110.5E, 140E and 160E respectively. The MEO satellites are operating in orbit at an altitude of 21528 kilometers
and an inclination of 55 to the equatorial plane. The IGSO satellites are operating
in orbit at an altitude of 35786 kilometers and an inclination of 55 to the equatorial plane. These satellites broadcast navigation signals and messages within 3 frequency bands. The BeiDou system has been in development for more than a decade, and it is estimated to be operational with global coverage at the latest in 2020.
The BeiDou satellites transmit ranging signals based on the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) principle, like GPS and Galileo. The mixed constellation
structure of BeiDou results in better observation geometry for positioning and or-
M. Z. H. Bhuiyan et al.
bit determination compared to current GPS and GLONASS, and future Galileo,
especially in China and neighboring regions. The BeiDou system has already
started contributing to the multi-GNSS benefits where increased accuracy, availability and integrity are possible when utilizing interoperable GNSS.
The characteristics of BeiDou B1I (B1 In-phase) signal can be compared with
GPS L1 signal in order to realize the similarities and differences between the two
systems. Both the civilian signals from these two systems have similar characteristics in general, for example, the periods of their spreading codes are both 1 millisecond (ms) long, and the coordinate systems and the navigation message structures are almost the same with minor differences [1], [2]. This eventually means
that many algorithms that are implemented for the GPS receiver can be readily
available to the BeiDou receiver without any major modification. But to improve
the positioning performance, all the modern GNSS signals, including BeiDou and
the GPS L5, introduce a second layer of modulation between the navigation data
and the PRN code chips, known as Neumann-Hoffman (NH) code modulation.
This ultimately improves the data bit rate of the modern GNSS signals. The legacy
GPS L1 C/A signal has a data bit rate of 50 bps, which means that 1 bit data lasts
for 20 ms (i.e., the PRN code cycle repeats 20 times for each data bit). The data bit
rate of BeiDou D2 signal is 500 bps which means that 1 bit data lasts for only 2
ms (i.e., 2 spreading code cycles). The data bit rate of BeiDou D1 signal is 50 bps
originally, but after modulated by NH code, the data bit rate becomes 1 kbps. So
compared to the GPS signal, the data bit rate of BeiDou signal increases significantly. Particularly, the NH code modulated D1 signal has 1 kbps data bit rate
which makes data bit transition possible within the data bit boundary. The use of
NH code and the resultant increase in the data bit rate has pros and cons. On the
positive side, the NH code can boost the ability of anti-narrowband interference
and improve the cross-correlation property of satellite signals and the bit synchronization [3]; whereas on the negative side, the existence of NH code makes the
acquisition and tracking of the modernized GNSS signals more challenging [4][7].
The use of a software-defined GNSS receiver is highly appreciated for its flexibility, re-configurability and diversity. These unique characteristics of a softwaredefined receiver make it possible to develop and then to validate new algorithms
for optimizing the receiver performance at a low cost [8]. A number of softwaredefined receivers have already been developed for GNSS signal reception and
processing [8]-[11]. Most of these receives are capable of processing GPS,
GLONASS and Galileo signals. Recently, a PC-based BeiDou software receiver is
introduced in [12] with limited algorithmic details on how to acquire, track and
process a NH code modulated BeiDou signal. Therefore, in this paper, the authors
discuss the main functionalities of a BeiDou receiver considering the challenges
introduced by the existence of NH code modulation.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 1.2 discusses the main
functionalities of a software-defined GNSS receiver in view of BeiDou satellite
navigation system. In Section 1.3, data collection scenarios and experimental con-
figurations are presented and the positioning results are presented. Finally, conclusions and the future work lists are discussed in Section 1.4.
Fig. 1 BeiDou signal spectrum (up), time-domain plot (lower-left), and bin distribution of the
digitized IF samples
M. Z. H. Bhuiyan et al.
Table 1. NSL stereo v2 front-End configuration for BeiDou B1I signal reception
Intermediate Frequency
Front-end Bandwidth
Sampling Frequency
Number of Quantization bits
6.5 MHz
4.2 MHz
26 MHz
2 bits
Fig. 2 24 ms long incoming BeiDou signal is structured into 20 chunks of 5 ms long block
with an index increment of 1.
v. As the NH code length is 20 bits, there are altogether 20 chunks of correlation matrices with all possible code delay and carrier Doppler combinations for a specific BeiDou satellite. The winning index is the one which
has the maximum correlation peak, and therefore, it can then be used for
detecting the presence of the satellite, along with the estimation of the carrier Doppler and the code phase via a pre-detection threshold computed
against a certain probability of false alarm.
The above acquisition technique is used in the software receiver in order to acquire the BeiDou IGSO and MEO satellites. The resultant acquisition metric is
shown in Fig 3.
M. Z. H. Bhuiyan et al.
Bit boundary detection: Once the BeiDou receiver keeps tracking the carrier
phase and the code offset of the incoming signal, the next phase is to detect the bit
boundary and then to wipe off the NH code. The purpose of bit boundary detection is to avoid integration across a data bit-edge which might cause errors in the
navigation message detection. Algorithms for the bit boundary detection can be
found in [10], [15], [16]. The Histogram Method, for instance, senses the bit sign
changes and keeps a statistic of their position. But this approach will not work
with the BeiDou D1 signal due to the presence of NH code. The sign changes in
this code within the data bit boundary would in fact be detected as data bit changes affecting the statistics that this method uses for the bit boundary detection. On
the other hand, as the data bits are now modulated with the NH code, a simple correlation of the incoming NH code modulated data with the locally generated NH
code can then be used to estimate the bit edge. The index with a maximum corre-
lation peak of 20 will be perfectly aligned with the NH code, and it can then be
used as the bit boundary index.
C/N0 estimation: The Carrier-to-Noise density ratio (C/N0) in the receivers is often calculated based on the ratio of the narrowband and the wideband power [15].
If this C/N0 estimation technique is used, the NH code must have to be wiped off
before the narrowband power is calculated. Otherwise, the narrowband power calculation will be erroneous due to the presence of bit transition within the 20 ms bit
boundary. In the implemented software-defined BeiDou receiver, the C/N0 is estimated based on the ratio of the signals narrowband power to its wideband power
as mentioned in [15]. Fig. 5 shows the C/N0 of the tracked BeiDou satellites. As
shown in the figure, the C/N0s of the IGSO satellites signals are lower than the
MEO satellites signals, as they have to traverse longer distance than the MEO
ones.
Navigation solution: At the navigation message decoding phase, the first step is
to detect the sub-frame preambles on the demodulated data. The BeiDou navigation message has both error correction coding and data interleaving. The error correction is performed by the Bose, Chaudhuri, and Hocquenghem (BCH 15,11,1)
codes, which are capable of correcting one-bit error within every block of 15 bits.
After successfully decoding the navigation message, a receiver position can be
calculated via a least-square method with at least 4 visible satellites with decoded
ephemerides.
M. Z. H. Bhuiyan et al.
Table 1. The BeiDou B1I signal spectrum, time-domain plot and bin distribution
of the digitized IF samples were already shown in Fig. 1 of Section 1.2.
The latest BeiDou data was collected on November 27 at around 5:40 AM UTC
time at a static position with a roof antenna in Finnish Geodetic Institute, Kirkkonummi, Finland. The data was collected for about 99 seconds. The sky-plot at the
time of data collection is shown in Fig 6. There are 1 GEO satellite (PRN 05), 2
IGSO satellites (PRNs 6 and 9), and 2 MEO (PRNs 11 and 12) satellites. At the
moment, the FGI-GSRx BeiDou receiver can acquire, track and offer a navigation
solution with BeiDou D1 signal from IGSO and MEO satellites. The authors have
been working to include GEO satellites (D2) signal reception capability in their
software-defined BeiDou receiver.
Fig. 6 Sky-plot of BeiDou satellite navigation system at UTC time 5:40 AM at Finnish Geodetic
Institute with elevation cut-off angle 100
The horizontal error scatter plot is shown in Fig. 7, and the position error variations in ENU frame is shown in Fig. 8. The position error statistics is finally presented in Table 2.
Fig. 8 position error variations with respect to true position in ENU frame
The error statistics were computed for a stand-alone code-phase based position
solution without applying any environmental error corrections. Among the few
collected data sets, the error statistics are shown also with one other old data set
from Aug 21, 2013. Both the data sets were 99 seconds long, and they were collected with the same front-end configuration as mentioned earlier in Table 1. The
position error statistics were computed with respect to true known position. The
horizontal and vertical mean errors for Nov 27, 2013 dataset were 4.66 and 4.88
meters respectively with a mean PDOP of 5.96. And, the horizontal and vertical
mean errors for Aug 21, 2013 dataset were 5.94 and 9.74 meters respectively with
a mean PDOP of 4.75.
Table 2. Position error statistics with respect to true position
Data
collection
date
Nov 27, 2013
Aug 21, 2013
Std.
Dev.
[m]
3.02
3.48
Horizontal
Mean
Max
[m]
[m]
4.66
5.94
12.58
16.47
Mean
HDOP
3.83
3.40
Std.
Dev.
[m]
3.19
3.74
Vertical
Mean
Max
[m]
[m]
4.81
9.74
15.39
16.75
Mean
VDOP
4.56
3.33
1.4 Conclusions
This paper presents the main functionalities of a software-defined BeiDou B1I receiver, while highlighting the similarities and differences of BeiDou B1I signal
has with the existing GPS L1 C/A signal. A novel acquisition technique for long
coherent integration in the presence of NH code was also presented and implemented. Real data was collected with a front-end, which is then processed with the
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M. Z. H. Bhuiyan et al.
1.5 References
1. BeiDou Navigation Satellite System Signal In Space Interface Control Document (2012):
Open Service Signal B1I (Version 1.0), China Satellite Navigation Office.
2. IS-GPS-200G (2012) Navstar GPS space segment / Navigation User Interfaces. Global Positioning Systems Directorate.
3. Zou D, Deng Z, Huang J, Liu H, Yang L (2009) A study of Neuman Hoffman codes for GNSS
application. In: Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing, 2009.
4. Mongrdien C, Lachapelle G, Cannon M E (2006) Testing GPS L5 acquisition and tracking
algorithms using a hardware simulator. In: Proceedings of ION GNSS. pp. 2901-2913.
5. Hegarty C, Tran M, Van Dierendonck A J (2003) Acquisition algorithms for the GPS L5 signal. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of
The Institute of Navigation. pp. 165-177.
6. Zheng B, Lachapelle G (2004) Acquisition schemes for a GPS L5 software receiver. In: Proceedings of GNSS. pp. 1035-1040.
7. Yang C, Hegarty C, Tran M (2004) Acquisition of the GPS L5 signal using coherent combining of L5 and Q5. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite
Division of The Institute of Navigation. pp. 2184-2195.
8. Borre K, Akos D M, Bertelsen N, Rinder P, Jensen S H (2007). A software-defined GPS and
Galileo receiver: a single-frequency approach. In: 1st ed. Applied And Numerical Harmonic
Analysis, Birkhuser Verlag GmbH, Boston, USA.
9. Tsui J (2000) Fundamentals of Global Positioning System Receivers: A Software Approach.
In: Wiley Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering, John-Wiley & Sons, New York.
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Proceedings of ION GNSS. pp. 21-24.
11. Normark P-L, Christian S (2005) Hybrid GPS/Galileo Real Time Software Receiver. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute
of Navigation. pp. 1906-1913.
[12] Juanga J-C, Tsaia C-T, Chena Y-H (2013) Development of a PC-Based Software Receiver
for the Reception of Beidou Navigation Satellite Signals. In: Journal of Navigation, Vol. 66,
Issue 05, pp. 701-718.
[13] Nottingham Scientific Limited (2013) Delivering Reliable and Robust GNSS, available
online (retrieved on 10 November, 2013): http://www.nsl.eu.com/datasheets/stereo.pdf
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[15] Parkinson B W, Spilker J J (1996) Global Positioning System: Theory and Applications. In:
American Institute of Aeronautics, Vol. 1, 370 LEnfant Promenade, SW, Washington, DC.
[16] Ziedan N I, Garrison J (2003) Bit Synchronization and Doppler Frequency Removal at Very
Low Carrier to Noise Ratio Using a Combination of the Viterbi Algorithm with an Extended
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