This paper presents a novel system architecture and describes a proof-of-concept for a virtualized GNSS receiver. The main idea consists of moving apart the GNSS antenna from the baseband processing, thus allowing for a number of new applications and services based on GNSS signal products. After contextualizing this concept into a major trend followed by the IT industry and the academia in the latter years, the paper provides a snapshot on the latest industry trends and describes a vibrant ecosystem of open source projects and tools, which make possible the actual (and rapid) deployment of virtual services over software-defined optical networks that allow for the continuous transmission of GNSS signals from the antenna to a remote baseband processor. After providing a brief description of the main concepts and building blocks of the presented architecture, and identifying the fundamental technological bottlenecks, we present a proof-of-concept implemented with actual commercial–off–the–shelf hardware components, providing evidences of the system feasibility and releasing different versions of a free and open source software-defined, virtual GNSS receiver.

Grant numbers : projects TEC2015-69868-C2-2-R (ADVENTURE) and TEC2015-69256-R (DESTELLO).