Development of a software SBAS receiving module for a GPS receiver

António Miguel Cirilo Coimbra

Key information

Authors:

António Miguel Cirilo Coimbra (António Miguel Cirilo Coimbra)

Supervisors:

Luís Miguel Teixeira D'Avila Pinto da Silveira (Luís Miguel Teixeira D'Avila Pinto da Silveira)

Published in

05/09/2016

Abstract

Since the begin of times that our location have been a constant object of study. With the appearance of satellites we were able to be more precise on our location definition. One of the most known GNSS – Global Navigation Software Systems - in the entire world is the Global Positioning System also known as the GPS. However precise the GPS can be, it can certainly suffer a fewer enhancements and that is one of the reasons why the European Commission together with the European Space Agency and the EUROCONTROL began in 2005 the operations of the so called European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, or EGNOS. This service, among other things has the capacity to enhance the information we get from the satellite systems. By adding an EGNOS receptor to a GPS one, using an SDR (Software-defined radio) in the process to implement it we can get locations with a better precision and we can additionally add an error factor and a confidence margin to the EGNOS data that can enhance and better the results obtained from the satellite. A practical analysis done with three different locations, using the developed EGNOS receptor on an existent open-source program, the SoftGNSS, shows that the results obtained with the GPS with the EGNOS receptor are always more precise, closer to the real location than the ones observed with a GPS system. Besides this advantage, by using this approach it was also possible to get protection and alarmistic levels that cannot otherwise be obtained.