GPU-Assisted Correlators Applied in GNSS Software Receiver

GNSS software receiver has always been a hot research object due to its flexibility on updating new GNSS algorithms. However, the biggest bottleneck of PC based software receiver is the heavy calculation burden for correlation. Hence, to speed up the calculation, this paper introduces the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to realize the parallel operation for Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) and correlation on CPU. We design the CPU-assisted correlators through the programming model Computer Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) on the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 graphics card. Simulation results show that the new method can be operated remarkably faster than the traditional one done on standard CPU, which has provided strong support for the real time processing on the PC based GNSS software receiver.