Assessing the GNSS Interference Environment for Rail and Beyond

Christian Weber, Thomas Jost, Alexander Steingass, and Michael Meurer

Abstract:	Positioning and timing services provided by the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) have already given rise for various applications almost in all fields of our everyday life. With the advent of European Galileo significant performance improvements for civil users are expected due to the doubled number of satellites and the availability of multiple open signals. With the introduction of Galileo, new frequencies will find their way into GNSS usage, namely E5a/b and E6. Furthermore, advanced applications will be possible in the near future, relying on both GPS and GALILEO. Precision approaches in civil aviation, transportation of dangerous goods and autonomous navigation of land and air vehicles strongly depend on GNSS at least as a long time stable reference system used for calibration. This raises questions about the expected availability: Will the new frequency bands are as quiet in terms of radio interference and disturbances as the traditional GPS bands are believed to be? This work gives answers on this issue but also on another question: Is the GPS L1 band as quiet as everybody assumes? The results presented in this paper are based on a measurement campaign that was carried out by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) within the framework of the GJU project GIRASOLE. Because of the large amount of sampled signal data, automatic detection algorithms are proposed to discriminate between data sets including interference and sets having no additional man-made signals. Detected interference signals are classified and parameterized by means of periodogram estimation and DBSCAN clustering. The work provides valuable insights in and results about the degree of interference that has to be expected in future GNSS environments using not only the new but also the traditional frequency bands.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 28 - 30, 2008 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	661 - 669
Cite this article:	Weber, Christian, Jost, Thomas, Steingass, Alexander, Meurer, Michael, "Assessing the GNSS Interference Environment for Rail and Beyond," Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2008, pp. 661-669.
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