NUT4NT, Open-Source 4-Channel GNSS Receiver Development Board

6 October, 2016

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Although the industry of professional satellite navigation systems is limited to experts and large companies, Amungo Navigation is working towards bringing this industry to individual developers, small companies, and startups through its new open source platform “NUT4NT”.

NUT4NT is a development board which implements NT1065 chip with USB 3.0 interface. NT1065 is a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver designed by NTLab, a fabless microelectronic company. It is the first low-cost low-power RF front-end solution in the world. It also has 4 channels supporting all GNSS systems and bands.

GNSS receivers are electronic devices that receive and process signals from a GNSS satellite. These signals used to provide information about receiver’s position,velocity, and time.

NUT4NT has two different working modes. The first uses dual inputs and acts as a centimeter level precision positioning tool, without the need of high quality antenna. The other mode uses the four inputs and provides an array antenna processing system to simply reduce interference and noise.

Dual Inputs Mode (Left) - Four Inputs Mode (Right) — Dual Inputs Mode (Left) – Four Inputs Mode (Right)

Hardware and software specifications of NUT4NT:

Receiver chip: NT1065
USB 3.0 controller: CYUSB3014
Clock rate: 10 MHz
RF inputs: two or four, depending on board option
RF inputs referred Noise Floor: 1 dB
ADC resolution – two-bit
ADC frequency – up to 99 MHz
Samples transfer – continuous full stream, from 20 to 100 Mbytes/sec
Power: 5V @ 0.5 A from USB or external adapter
Size: 70x50x20 mm (early board) / 77x122x25 mm (single board)
All GNSS systems: GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, IRNSS and future
All GNSS band: L1/L2/L3/L5, G1/G2/G5, B1/B2, E1/E5 and future
Four-channel synchronous reception for antenna array processing
Signal dumper (grabber) software
Spectrum analyzer software
NT1065 configuration software
Supports libusb API
Supports native Cypress driver API
Software for Windows, Linux, and potentially all other OS’s with libusb

There are two options of NUT4NT boards, the Early Board and the Single Board.

Early Board is for $399 and there are only limited boards to order through the crowdfunding campaign page. It consists of two separated boards: the base board, which has the USB 3.0 controller, and NT1065 submodule board.

Single Board will be available later as a future plan, and it is said to have only one board instead of two.