GNSS User Technology: State-of-the-Art and Future Trends

Abstract

Advances in the miniaturization, computational capabilities, and cost reduction of semiconductor technology have made global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) the favorite choice for positioning. Currently, positioning is a key factor for many essential tasks in our modern society and will become even more important with the advent of new concepts such as the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities and autonomous driving. The extensive use of GNSSs in a wide range of applications has caused their migration from the professional segment to the mass-market segment in terms of both technology and performance. This presents new and more stringent requirements in terms of accuracy, robustness, ubiquity, and continuity for the original “open sky” GNSS design. GNSS technology has experienced an unprecedented evolution in the last decade, and it is expected to exponentially evolve in the next decade. This evolution is considered in this paper with the aim of providing a unified reference for current GNSS receiver technologies and solutions and its expected evolution in the next decade. We consider receiver concepts, antennae, RF front ends, digital signal processing, and positioning algorithms. The impacts on the different GNSS market segments and applications are also analyzed.

Keywords

• Positioning
• GNSS
• user segment evolution
• core technology
• algorithms
• receiver architecture