Effects of Aircraft Overflights on GPS Measurements

Lukas Marti, Frank van Graas, and Joseph Kelly

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Observations at the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) Ground Facility (LGF) revealed the presence of brief signal anomalies that lead to receiver errors. At some locations, these anomalies can occur several times during the day. Aircraft overflights of the LGF antennas were identified as one possible cause of the anomalies. A controlled experiment was designed to characterize the effects of aircraft overflights on the LGF GPS reception antennas. Ohio University’s Douglas DC-3 research aircraft was flown at varying heights over the LGF antennas. At the LGF, a radio frequency (RF) data collection system was triggered to collect 10 s of data centered around anomalous tracking conditions as reported by the LGF GPS receivers. Block processing techniques were used to analyze the received signal at 1 ms intervals. The paper presents results for several overflights during which the LGF GPS receivers experienced loss of tracking. It is shown that aircraft overflights can cause measurement outages.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 51, Number 2
Pages:	123 - 132
Cite this article:	Marti, Lukas, van Graas, Frank, Kelly, Joseph, "Effects of Aircraft Overflights on GPS Measurements", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 51, No. 2, Summer 2004, pp. 123-132.
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