Impact Of The Bandwidth And Frequency Of Radiated Emissions Noise On GNSS Receiver Performance

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers are extremely sensitive to electromagnetic interference from nearby components. Emission limits for components placed near to GNSS receivers, however, do not account for the fact that the amount of interference changes with the frequency and bandwidth of the emissions, as well as its magnitude. The following study investigates the impact of the bandwidth and the frequency of interfering noise on the carrier-to-noise density ratio (C/N0) of GNSS receivers. Measurements were performed in a controlled laboratory setup to eliminate environmental uncertainties. Receiver performance was evaluated in the presence of narrow band and broadband interference at different offset frequencies for GPS L1 C/A (BPSK(1)), GPS L1 P (BPSK(10)), and Galileo E1 (CBOC) signals. Results show that broadband interference centered at the GNSS carrier causes the most severe degradation in C/N0, while narrow band interference with 4 MHz offset has significantly less impact. The study further demonstrates that the automatic gain control (AGC) can play a critical role in C/N0 degradation by effectively increasing the internal quantization noise level relative to the signal. These findings highlight key considerations for evaluating acceptable levels of unintended emissions from components placed in the same system as a GNSS receiver.

Department(s)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Comments

National Science Foundation, Grant IIP-1916535

Keywords and Phrases

carrier-to-noise density ratio; EMI; GNSS; interference; noise; satellite

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2026

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