Hardware and Software Implementation of a GPS Receiver Test Bed Running from PC

PC 기반 GPS 수신기 하드웨어 모듈 및 펌웨어 개발

When developing a new GPS receiver module, the essential problems are evaluation of reliable algorithms, software debugging, and performance comparison between algorithms to find optimal solution. Most GPS receiver modules nowadays use a correlator to track signals from satellites and an MCU (Micro Controller Unit) to control operations of the entire module. The problem of software evaluation from MCU is very difficult, due to limitation of MCU resources and low ability of interfacing with user. Normally, user has to expense special tool kit for a limiting access to MCU but it is also hard to use. This article introduces an implementation of a GPS receiver test bed using correlator GP2021 interfacing with ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) PC bus. This way can give user complete control and visibility into the operation of the receiver, then user can easily debug program and test algorithms. For this article, the least square method is implemented to test the hardware and software performance.