Sponsored By
Efika 5200B Project
Open source GPS navigationin category Hardware
proposed by trondd on 16th August 2006 (accepted on 4th September 2006)
Project Summary
Goal:To create a tight integration between an open source gps implementation, an inertial navigation system and an open source processing system.
Where and when?
I am a Norwegian student at NTNU, where I am studying satellite navigation. For my master thesis I will be investigating a open source implementation of a GPS receiver running on one of these systems:
http://products.zarlink.com/product_profiles/GP4020.htm
http://www.gpscreations.com/Products_GPS1005.html
The open source gps software is the firmware that runs on a ARM core in the GPS baseband processor, but the system is going to be integrated with intertial navigation systems, so the main processing will have to be performed in a separate system.
How can You help?
Using a PowerPC system for development would be a significant benefit since the final target would most likely be an embedded system.
Positioning services like GPS and the coming European system Galilea are becoming more and more widespread. By creating an open source implementation of such systems the PowerPC platform could become an even more interesting platform for such purposes!
Project Blog Entries
The USRP board arrived a couple of days ago, but I think I will leave it on the shelf untill after Christmas, as there are plenty of other things to do...
I have decided to the architecture of the GPS receiver, which makes it a lot more flexible and powerful:
- The GPS receiver has been replaced with the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). The USRP is a generic software defined radio (SDR) peripheral board that contains two DACs, two ADCs, an FPGA and a USB interface. Several differnent dautherboards can be connected to the motherboard to interface it with several different radio receivers. I have ordered a broadband receiver that is capable of receiving both GPS, GLONASS (Russinan) and Galileo (European) signals.
- The USRP does digial down-conversion of the received signal, and the raw data is thereafter transfered to the host computer, which does the majority of the signal processing.
- The signal processing is performed by the GNU Radio toolbox; a general purpose toolbox for building software radios which runs on all major operating systems.
The remaining work is therefore to create the neccessary specific signal processing blocks for the GPS receiver. By running the GNU Radio software on the EFIKA we have a complete open source GSP receiver that is also expandable to use other GNSS systems!
More information can be found here:
Still no news of the card. Not sure if I should actually expect to get something, but hey: What can you expect when they are giving it away for free. I am still hoping...
First I would like to say that I was very excited when my project was approved. I am now waiting for the gps receiver and the EFIKA board to arrive so I can get started. The gps receiver is the GP4020 from Zarlink, and it will be running a open source firmware written by Andrew Greenberg and others. You can read more about this project on http://gps.psas.pdx.edu.
If you want to follow the development of this project you can follow it on my weblog: http://trondd.blogspot.com