GNU Radio Conference 2026

gr-pocketsdr: Bringing PocketSDR Front-Ends to GNU Radio and GNSS-SDR Ecosystem

22 Sept 2026, 13:30

15m

Mountain Ballroom (Talley Student Union)

Paper (with talk) Hardware for GNU Radio Main Track

Speaker

Minhaj Uddin Ahmad (University of Alabama)

Description

Open-source software-defined radio (SDR) ecosystems thrive on broad hardware support. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-SDR, a popular GNSS software receiver based on GNU Radio (GR), is no different. PocketSDR front-ends are an effective alternative to generic commodity SDRs for GNSS research. PocketSDRs are specifically tuned to GNSS bands and share a common clock across multiple RF channels that enable coherent multi-band processing. In addition, they are highly cost-effective. This paper presents gr-pocketsdr, which is a GR out-of-tree (OOT) module, that enables open-source PocketSDR front-ends to operate as a GR signal source. Furthermore, we develop a GNSS-SDR adapter that enables use of the gr-pocketsdr module as a GNSS signal source. Experimental results show sustained IQ streaming at 20 Msps without sample loss and provide a real-time PVT (position, velocity, and time) solution. The source code is available at https://github.com/minhaj6/gr-pocketsdr.