4.- Flexibility

In the context of engineering design, flexibility refers to the ability of a system to respond to potential internal or external changes affecting its value delivery, in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Indicators of Flexibility

It follows a list of possible flexibility indicators for a software-defined GNSS receiver:

• Possibility to either use synthetically generated or real-life GNSS signals.
• Possibility to process signals either in real-time or in post-processing time (only limited by the computational capacity of the processing platform executing the software receiver).
• Possibility to use interchangeable RF front-ends.
• Possibility to define custom receiver architectures.
• Possibility to easily define / interchange implementations and parameters for each processing block.
• Possibility to change parameters while the software is executing.
• Possibility to be executed in different processing platforms (mainframes, personal computers, embedded systems, etc).
• Availability of a versatile configuration mechanism.
• Availability of operation modes, as combinations of:
  • Single / multiple frequency bands.
  • Single / multiple constellations.
  • Stand-alone / assisted / differential GNSS.