Design of a Configurable Monitoring Station for Scintillations by Means of a GNSS Software Radio Receiver

This letter addresses the design and implementation of a monitoring station for Global Navigation Satellite Systems signals based on the software-defined radio paradigm. The monitoring platform exploits a digital data grabber based on the use of Universal Software Radio Peripheral devices and a satellite navigation fully software receiver; with respect to a traditional commercial receiver, this implementation solution grants a higher level of flexibility for the processing strategy, enabling the possibility of a deeper analysis of the signals in case of meaningful events, such as ionospheric scintillations or radio frequency interference, through the storage of raw samples. Such an implementation approach yields valuable advantages in critical and remote areas, such as polar regions, where resources are limited and installation, maintenance, and replacement of hardware may be critical.