Testing Software Receivers

December 1, 2009 By: Thomas Renström, Robin Håkanson, James Tidd, Jakob Almqvist, Fredrik Lindström, David Karlsson, Christian Ståhlberg, Alexander Mitelman GPS World

Real-world GNSS receiver testing forms a crucial step in the product development cycle. Unfortunately, traditional testing methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive, particularly when it is necessary to evaluate both nominal performance and the likelihood of unexpected deviations with a high level of confidence. This article describes a simple, efficient method that exploits the unique features of software GNSS receivers to achieve both goals. The approach improves the scope and statistical validity of test coverage by an order of magnitude or more compared with conventional methods.

While approaches vary, one common aspect of all discussions of GNSS receiver testing is that any proposed testing methodology should be statistically significant. Whether in the laboratory or the real world, meeting this goal requires a large number of independent test results. For traditional hardware GNSS receivers, this implies either a long series of sequential trials, or the testing of a large number of nominally identical devices in parallel. Unfortunately, both options present significant drawbacks.

Owing to their architecture, software GNSS receivers offer a unique solution to this problem. In contrast with a typical hardware receiver application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a modern software receiver typically performs most or all baseband signal processing and navigation calculations on a general-purpose processor. As a result, the digitization step typically occurs quite early in the RF chain, generally as close as possible to the signal input and first-stage gain element. The received signal at that point in the chain consists of raw intermediate frequency (IF) samples, which typically encapsulate the characteristics of the signal environment (multipath, fading, and so on), receiving antenna, analog RF stage (downconversion, filtering, and so on), and sampling, but are otherwise unprocessed. In addition to ordinary real-time operation, many software receivers are also capable of saving the digital data stream to disk for subsequent post-processing. Here we consider the potential applications of that post-processing to receiver testing.

FIGURE1. Conventional test drive (two receivers)

Conventional Testing Methods

Traditionally, the simplest way to test the real-world performance of a GNSS receiver is to put it in a vehicle or a portable pack; drive or walk around an area of interest (typically a challenging environment such as an “urban canyon”); record position data; plot the trajectory on a map; and evaluate it visually. An example of this is shown in Figure 1 for two receivers, in this case driven through the difficult radio environment of downtown San Francisco.

While appealing in its simplicity and direct visual representation of the test drive, this approach does not allow for any quantitative assessment of receiver performance; judging which receiver is “better” is inherently subjective here. Different receivers often have different strong and weak points in their tracking and navigation algorithms, so it can be difficult to assess overall performance, especially over the course of a long trial. Also, an accurate evaluation of a trial generally requires some first-hand knowledge of the test area; unless local maps are available in sufficiently high resolution, it may be difficult to tell, for example, how accurate a trajectory along a wooded area might be.

In Figure 2, it appears clear enough that the test vehicle passed down a narrow lane between two sets of buildings during this trial, but it can be difficult to tell how accurate this result actually is. As will be demonstrated below, making sense of a situation like this is essentially beyond the scope of the simple “visual plotting” test method.