Vector tracking of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) signals and deeply integrating GNSS with an inertial navigation system (INS) improve robustness and accuracy in poor GNSS signal-to-noise environments. Both require a dedicated interface between the GNSS receiver and the navigation processor to enable the GNSS receiver to output the correlator measurements and input numerically-controlled oscillator (NCO) commands. This paper investigates the requirements for such an interface. Data latency is analysed for a range of different stand-alone GNSS vector tracking and deep INS/GNSS integration architectures. Suitable latency compensation techniques are identified. It is shown that, for the majority of applications, an NCO command update rate of 50 Hz with latency compensation and 100 Hz without is sufficient. An approach to interface standardisation which can handle a wide range of different GNSS signals and receiver designs is proposed.
