The design, construction, and testing of a modular GPS bistatic radar software receiver for small platforms

To allow for integration of a Global Positioning System (GPS) bistatic receiver on small platforms, the instrument itself needs to be redesigned with size and power limitations in mind. This new design will feature two analog front-ends with a common clock and a Universal Serial Bus (USB) bridge to move the digital samples to a x86-based single board computer. These samples are then saved to disk for post-processing. It is not the focus of this thesis to develop bistatic algorithms, but to provide a modular hardware platform that can be used for GPS bistatic research on small platforms. In addition to the hardware design, thorough testing and verification will be performed to ensure correct operation of the receiver. These tests are concluded with a field test, where GPS reflections were detected with the instrument from a high-altitude balloon mission. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...