Rockwell International's Miniature High Performance GPS Receiver

David E. Gray, Daniel C. Forseth

Abstract:	In order to accommodate the physical space limitations of a se­lect set of platforms that do not require all the interfaces available in the DoD Standard Phase III GPS receivers, Rockwell International has independently developed a miniaturized, high perfor­mance GPS receiver. Rockwell has reduced the size, weight and power of the GPS re­ceiver by incorporating advanced LSI technologies developed by the company and industry. This receiver was the culmination of several years of Internal Research and Development regarding a GPS signal processing chip set and advanced architecture micro­processor. The hardware functional partitioning has been aligned with the four major GPS operational areas in order to allow max­imum adaptability of the receiver design to new technologies and applications. Paramount to the development effort was the desire to maintain a high level of software commonality with the existing Phase III designs. By using the same processor architecture, programming language, and maintaining the basic format of the raw GPS mea­surements, the miniature receiver software has directly benefited from the extensive field testing and formal qualification of the Phase III designs. Required software changes were limited to func­tional re-partitioning to take advantage of the improved hardware partitioning, scale factors, and address changes. In addition to the required software modifications, significant enhancements were in­cluded with many more enhancements planned. This paper describes the architecture of Rockwell's miniature re­ceiver and the rationale behind the engineering decisions. It dis­cusses the existing features of the receiver, its expansion capabili­ties and suggests possible future offerings.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1989) September 27 - 29, 1989 The Broadmoor Hotel Colorado Spring, CO
Pages:	207 - 216
Cite this article:	Gray, David E., Forseth, Daniel C., "Rockwell International's Miniature High Performance GPS Receiver," Proceedings of the 2nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1989), Colorado Spring, CO, September 1989, pp. 207-216.
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