Low-Cost, High-Fidelity Data Acquisition System for Precision GNSS Adaptive Antenna Arrays

摘要

This paper presents a detailed description and analysis of lowcost, high-fidelity data acquisition system (DAS) hardware that was assembled to support research of precision GNSS adaptive antenna arrays. The DAS is composed of eight Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) N210 receivers combined with additional connectorized RF front-end hardware, which supports simultaneous recording of RF signals from up to 8 antenna elements to hard drives for post-processing. A precise channel calibration was developed in order to support precision needed by cm-level precision GNSS receiver measurements. Experiments were performed in order to carefully verify the capabilities of the system to support research and development of adaptive antenna arrays for precision GNSS receivers. Results of these experiments are provided.