Design and Implementation of RF Front-End for GPS Receiver Utilizing Discrete Components

Abstract

A GPS radio frequency (RF) front-end based on discrete components is designed and implemented in this paper. Research on the structures of RF front-ends for GPS receivers, and an intermediate frequency (IF) digitalization front-end is expounded in details. Analyze the design considerations of filter bandwidth, sampling frequency, quantization bits, and automatic gain control, which would effect on the whole performance of RF front-end. Then, appropriate discrete components are selected, and a low IF RF front-end hardware platform with orthogonal structure is implemented. Test results indicate that the hardware platform combined with base-band module could effectively complete signals acquisition.