Method for Assessing the Interference Impact on GNSS Receivers

The definition of new families of curves named interference error envelope (IEE) and interference running average (IRA) is presented. Such tools are able to assess the impact of RF interference on different GNSS receivers, taking into account the features of the in-band interference source. In fact the actual impact on the final performance is strictly related to the specific receiver architectures. Continuous wave (CW) and wide band (WB) interference signals are considered in order to assess by means of IEE and IRA the robustness of new modulations based on the multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) scheme for several receiver configurations, by varying the discriminator spacing, type, and the front-end filter bandwidth. Interference robustness is evaluated and compared with those of the well-known binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and binary offset carrier BOC(1,1) modulations. Simulation and theoretical results are validated by means of laboratory tests, proving the reliability of IEE curves for interference impact assessment.