Exploiting standardized metadata for GNSS SDR remote processing: A case study

The proliferation of ad-hoc, highly customized, GNSS Software-defined radio (SDR) receivers and raw data collection systems is opening new opportunities for research focused on the analysis of new approaches in GNSS data processing. Especially when looking at the post-processing of GNSS signals for monitoring purposes, the availability of big-sized raw digital samples allows for the application of different algorithms and processing strategies on the same data-set, thus enabling valuable comparisons and proper tuning of the algorithms themselves. A side effect is that the huge quantity of GNSS data collections, grabbed in disparate scenarios and environmental conditions and distributed all around the world, is making hard to share this data between different research labs, thus limiting the possibility of conducting extensive analysis of relevant ionospheric phenomena affecting the quality to the GNSS signal. In this paper, the authors propose a novel methodology to deal with the processing and the management of this huge amount of data, and guarantee interoperability of different data collection and data processing systems leveraging on the adoption of a new emerging and open standard for GNSS metadata which is now under standardization by the ION GNSS SDR Metadata Standardization Working Group.