GNSS-Metadata-Standard

Problem

In recent years there has been a proliferation of software defined radio (SDR) data collection systems and processing platforms designed for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver applications or those that support GNSS bands.

For post-processing, correctly interpreting the GNSS SDR sampled datasets produced or consumed by these systems has historically been a cumbersome and error-prone process. This is because these systems necessarily produce datasets of various formats, the subtleties of which are often lost in translation when communicating between the producer and consumer of these datasets.

Solution

The GNSS-Metadata-Standard is an effort to standardize the metadata associated with GNSS SDR sampled data files and the layout of the binary sample files.

The GNSS SDR Metadata Standard defines parameters and schema to express the contents of SDR sample data files. The standard is designed to promote the interoperability of GNSS SDR data collection systems and processors. The metadata files are human readable and in XML format.

For more information on the standard, and to download sample data files, please visit GNSS Sofware Defined Receiver Metadata Standard.

Repository

Organization

This repository hosts a set of compliant open source C++ API for reading metadata and binary samples.

The repository contains two libraries:

An API library that can be used for loading and writing Metadata to/from file and
A converter library that can be used for parsing packed binary SDR data and converting it to machine-format (int, float, etc.) streams

Demonstrations

A selection of demonstration applications are provided in GNSS-Metadata-Standard/source/app/, including:

TestAPI: A demonstration of reading/writing XML Metadata
DemoConverter: A demonstration of the basic binary conversion utilities
Converter: A simple binary sample file converter utility that can be used for converting packed binary SDR files to machine-format (int, float, etc.) files

Contributing

The master branch is frozen between major updates, and updated once or twice annually.
Ongoing development and latests updates are available on the devel branch.
If you wish to submit code or pull-requests, please use the devel branch.

WARNING: Pull requests for master will be rejected during ongoing review and RFC process.

Building

To create a project for your IDE follow the steps below.

Dependencies

This project uses CMake.

Windows (Visual Studio)

cd GNSS-Metadata-Standard
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64"

Then open the .sln project and build the Release configuration.

Mac OS (Xcode)

cd GNSS-Metadata-Standard
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -G Xcode

Then open the .xcodeproj project and build the Release configuration.

Unix (make) or Mac OS (make)

cd GNSS-Metadata-Standard
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make

Testing

To test the code, change to the 'install' directory and run the accompanying matlab/octave script called check_converter.m.

If everything has build OK then you should see the following output:

check_converter
Deleting old files: ......Done.
Running the test converter ("Converter"): Checking the converted output:
CODC:            OK
FHG:             OK
FITWDP:          OK
IFEN:            OK
JRC:             OK
TRIGR:           OK

Test completed.

Integration

To add the the "GNSS-Metadata-Standard Converter" to your CMake managed project, add the following lines to your CMakeLists.txt file:

include_directories(
   path_to_where_you_copied_the_repository/GNSS-Metadata-Standard/source/api/inc
   path_to_where_you_copied_the_repository/GNSS-Metadata-Standard/source/converter/inc
)
add_subdirectory(
   path_to_where_you_copied_the_repository/GNSS-Metadata-Standard/source
)

target_link_libraries( your_library_or_executable api xml cnv )

and include the following in your main.cpp file

#include "GnssMetadata.h"
#include "Converter.h"

To add the only the "GNSS-Metadata-Standard API" to your CMake managed project, add the following lines to your CMakeLists.txt file:

include_directories(
   path_to_where_you_copied_the_repository/GNSS-Metadata-Standard/source/api/inc
)
add_subdirectory(
   path_to_where_you_copied_the_repository/GNSS-Metadata-Standard/source
)

target_link_libraries( your_library_or_executable api xml )