Software Development of IRNSS Receiver

Abstract

The satellite navigation system is the most important asset for any country in the world. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) encompasses all global satellite positioning systems like Global Positioning System (GPS) from the USA, Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) from Russia, Galileo from Europe and BeiDou from China and also, regional navigation systems like Quasi‐Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) from Japan, and Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) from India. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) succeeds to launch a group of seven satellites that covers Indian boundary and 1500 Km extended area near the border. To evaluate the performance of any navigation system a software tool is required. Popular GNSS software tools are RTKLIB, GPSTk, gLAB, and Bernese but none of them supports India's IRNSS system. The aim of the thesis is to develop GUI based software that can convert received data from IRNSS receiver into Comma Separated Values (CSV) format, process it to provide PVT (Position, Velocity, and Time) information and plot PVT data and represent it on maps like Google Maps. The process for estimating receiver position is involve reading of Receiver Independent Exchange (RINEX) navigation and observation files, calculating satellite position and clock bias from the satellite ephemeris using satellite positioning algorithm and then apply Single Point Positioning (SPP) algorithms based on least square estimation technique. The algorithms are implemented in Python 3.6 and MATLAB. Python Tkinter is used for developing GUI based software. Integration of algorithms with GUI has done using Python Tkinter. GUI has four main utilities: (i) Converter (ii) Process (iii) Plot and (iv) Gmap. Converter module provides facility to select RINEX Navigation and RINEX Observation file from the computer directory and convert it into CSV file which gets used during processing the data. Processing modules process the received data from the selected CSV file from the directory and provide receiver PVT information. Plot module provides PVT information in graphical form, also there is an option to save graphs and plots on desirable locations. Gmap module provides the receiver location on Google Maps.