International Global Navigation Satellite Systems Association
IGNSS Conference 2016
Colombo Theatres, Kensington Campus, UNSW Australia
6 – 8 December 2016
An ultra-low-cost antenna array frontend for GNSS
application
Thuan D Nguyen
Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Vietnam
thuan.nguyendinh@hust.edu.vn
Vinh T Tuan
Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, School of
Electrical Engineering and Telecommunication, UNSW
vinh.tran@student.unsw.edu.au
Tung H Ta
Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Vietnam
tung.tahai@hust.edu.vn
Letizia Lo Presti
Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
letizia.lopresti@polito.it
ABSTRACT
Antenna array frontends play a key role in grabbing GNSS digitalized signal
and providing the input data to the signal processing stage. However, the
existing antenna array frontends for GNSS application are often bulky and
costly. In this paper, a low-cost and compact antenna array frontend is
proposed. Besides, a possible solution to estimate the clock drift raised by the
internal architecture of the hardware components is also introduced. The
performance evaluation of the proposed frontend shows that the frontend is
effectively applicable for GNSS applications.
KEYWORDS: antenna array frontend, RTL2832.
1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, antenna array processing emerges as an effective technique for mitigating
interference and spoofing. However, antenna array frontends are costly, especially for GNSS
application. This is a barrier to widening studies on antenna array processing in GNSS field.
Several antenna array frontends for antenna array were proposed such as De Lorenzo et al.,
(2007). However, the quantization bits of these frontends are limited to the maximum of 2 bits.
Consequently, the frontends are less robust on mitigating strong interferences.
This paper proposes an ultra-low-cost antenna array frontend for GNSS application. In fact, the
proposed solution is based on the combination of the RTL2832 dongles obtained from Nooelec.
The operating frequency range of such dongles varies from 25 MHz to 1750 MHz covering the
whole band of GNSS signals. Moreover, the quantization bits of the ADC embedded in the
frontend can expand to 16 bits. Therefore, the proposed frontend is suitable for GNSS
applications.
