Progress Toward Airborne GPS Spatial Filtering Powered by Recent Advances in FPGA Technology

Abstract

Next-generation wireless devices use many coherent antennas to enhance wireless performance at the expense of size, weight, power, cost, and complexity. This has caused many multiantenna signal processing architectures to be unfit for deployment on unmanned aircraft. Recent advances in FPGA technology have reduced the footprint of a 16 antenna signal processor to a feasible size for unmanned aircraft. We are exploring the capabilities of this new technology by demonstrating an adaptive beamformer spatial filtered GPS system. The multiantenna implementation will increase the quality of GPS services and provide resistance to multipath and adversarial spoofing. This paper documents early progress in developing and verifying the firmware for the future demonstration.