RFSoC-Based Integrated Navigation and Sensing Using NavIC

TL;DR

This paper presents a hardware prototype of an NavIC-based remote sensing receiver system on RFSoC, capable of detecting ground targets via satellite signal reflections, validated through simulations and SNR tests.

Contribution

It introduces a novel RFSoC-based integrated system with synchronized channels for direct and reflected satellite signals, enabling ground target detection using delay-Doppler mapping.

Findings

Successful validation with loop-back configuration

Effective detection at various SNR levels

Demonstrated capability for ground-based remote sensing

Abstract

Prior art has proposed a secondary application for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) infrastructure for remote sensing of ground-based and maritime targets. Here, a passive radar receiver is deployed to detect uncooperative targets on Earth's surface by capturing ground-reflected satellite signals. This work demonstrates a hardware prototype of an L-band Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) satellite-based remote sensing receiver system mounted on an AMD Zynq radio frequency system-on-chip (RFSoC) platform. Two synchronized receiver channels are introduced for capturing the direct signal (DS) from the satellite and ground-reflected signal (GRS) returns from targets. These signals are processed on the ARM processor and field programmable gate array (FPGA) of the RFSoC to generate delay-Doppler maps of the ground-based targets. The performance is first validated in a loop-back configuration of the RFSoC. Next, the DS and GRS signals are emulated by the output from two ports of the Keysight Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) and interfaced with the RFSoC where the signals are subsequently processed to obtain the delay-Doppler maps. The performance is validated for different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR).