Design of a Reconfigurable Platform for Navigation Signal Simulation

Navigation signal simulator can generate signals consistent with real GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals, which can be processed by GNSS receivers in the same manner as it processes satellite signals in a real testing environment. The simulator can offer a high-fidelity means of testing GNSS receivers and other related systems. Such tests can be carried out in laboratories due to control of the GNSS constellation and global atmospheric environment by a single device. The navigation signal simulator, which can provide a real-like environment for the research and testing of navigation receivers, has been the key instrument for developing navigation systems and receiving devices, particularly for high-dynamic receivers. Therefore it has increasingly received widespread attentions in military and industrial sectors. With the development of a variety of new navigation systems and signal standards, there is a higher demand for the compatibility and renewal speed of the navigation signal simulators; specifically, it should be multi-mode and reconfigurable in order to realize the flexible design of navigation systems. Although a lot of GNSS simulators have been developed and used, the reconfigurable technologies have not yet appeared in the literature and applied to practices. This means that the existing simulators cannot achieve simulation of multiple GNSS signals by reconfiguration of the software and hardware on the same platform. In this paper, a new reconfigurable platform for navigation signal simulation is proposed and studied, aiming to simulate multi-mode and multi-frequency navigation signals. The performance of the proposed platform is validated from three perspectives: mathematic simulation software, output signals and receiver operation. The result shows that the platform can generate multi-mode and multi-frequency navigation signals through reconfiguration of the software and hardware on the same platform, hence supporting design of a number of navigation systems including Beidou, Global Positioning System (GPS), Russian Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and European Galileo system. The GNS8000 series navigation satellite signal simulator, designed based on such platform, have been successfully applied to the Beidou navigation satellite systems and widely used in the related fields of research and industries.