Research Online: Receiver with open software interface

For research purposes, the GNSS Receivers with Open Software Interface (GOOSE) hardware platform provides a development chain from experimental PCIe slot card to a professional embedded GNSS receiver.

The platform can be seen as a hardware-assisted software receiver where computational complex methods are implemented on digital FPGA hardware whereas algorithms can be developed and implemented on receiver side on a user-friendly GNU/Linux system. A transparent access to the hardware is made available via the Open GNSS Receiver Protocol that gives deep access to the hardware control and enables deepcoupling of inertial sensors and optimized precise positioning solutions.

It is therefore targeted at researchers, software developers and algorithm experts to build up new methods and applications. At the end of the project, 20 GOOSE platforms will be available for selected researchers for free.

The main benefits for potential product developers are an improved development process for GNSS receiver firmware, the possibility to embed application-specific software on the receiver, an access to all potentially relevant data for an improved position solution based on open white-box approach and the enabling of deeply coupling inertial sensors.

By Matthias Overbeck, Fabio Garzia, Alexander Popugaev, Oliver Kurz, Frank Forster, and Wolfgang Felber, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, and Ayse Sicramaz Ayaz, Sunjun Ko, and Bernd Eissfeller, Universitat der Bundeswehr, Germany. Presented at ION GNSS+ 2015.