The Magnavox 4800 product family: a modular design for GPS user equipment

The architecture of a family of GPS (Global Positioning System) user equipment is discussed. Hardware and software design issues are examined including partitioning of the receiver electronics, system bus structure, processing algorithms, and receiver channel management strategies. A design is presented that is based on a small set of common hardware modules. The architecture described is extended to support receivers with 2 to 16 channels. This modular design approach is shown to meet a range of user equipment needs including differential GPS reference stations, pseudolites, navigators, and time recovery units.<<ETX>>