A Lingua Franca to Design, Implement and Test Intelligent Software-Defined GNSS Receivers

Many Implementations of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have been developed so far (GPS, Glonass, Galileo, etc.). The aim of these implementations is to provide global position, velocity and timing (PVT) as a service for a variety of consumers (military, civilians, agency, etc.) with specific Quality of Service (QoS). The basics behind GNSS is trilateration and the use of electromagnetic waves phenomenon as the observable key to determine the PVT. Each implementation of GNSS has its own jargon to deliver the PVT Service. We end up to a situation in which GNSS concepts are overloaded or misused, and sometimes implementation, tool and technology dependent. As a direct result, this leads to more community segregation toward GNSS concepts and PVT service design, hence impeding the community from better understanding the nature of GNSS and collaboratively thinking about a flexible and efficient way to implement Intelligent GNSS Receivers, taking advantage of all existing implementations of GNSS and the power of Software-Defined Radio (SDR) paradigm, as well as defending themselves against PVT service spoofing. In this paper we provide a preliminary attempt to unify the concepts and jargon of GNSS, using gravity-like field analogy to introduce a Lingua Franca for GNSS, in order to boost creativity and scientific imagination of GNSS community to design, implement and Test Intelligent Software-Defined GNSS Receivers.