Compact, Low-cost, Single-frequency NavIC Receiver Development

Global Navigation Satellite Systems are being increasingly used for myriads of applications. Along with many global systems, various regional systems are also deployed to exploit commercial potential, for strategic point of views and self-reliance. IRNSS/ NavIC is one of such regional systems developed by ISRO. NavIC enabled, costly, geodetic receivers are available in market and at the same time, few NavIC enabled chipsets also are being offered by manufacturers. These NavIC chips are low cost but the associated receiver board costs are much higher in comparison to the chipsets. Compact, cost-effective NavIC receiver boards are essential for NavIC based application development, popularization and effective utilization of the system. This manuscript presents an effort towards development of a compact, cost-effective NavIC receiver board and the results on the solution accuracy obtained from it. The power-efficient board operates in L5 band and is of 8 cm  10 cm size. The module is working properly both in static and dynamic operation and can provide meter level 2-dimensional precision; the altitude variation is found to be higher in comparison. Final cost of the prototype board is less than US$ 60 which may be reduced during bulk production. The board can be used with Raspberry Pi (RPi) or other controller boards for ASCII NMEA data reception, display and recording. The board has the potential for using it as a stand-alone receiver, for integration with other systems towards application development or as a geolocation sensor in IoT applications enhancing the possibility of deployment of multiple sensors because of cost, power and size efficiency.