Towards Analyzing the Effect of Interference Monitoring in GNSS Scintillation

Ionospheric Scintillation Monitoring Receivers (ISMR) are specialized GNSS receivers able to track and monitor scintillations in order to collect data that can be used to model the phenomenon, study its affects at receiver level and possibly predict its occurrence in the future. Such receivers are able to measure the amount of scintillation affecting a satellite signal in both amplitude and phase by making use of correlation data from the tracking processing blocks. This is normally done by computing two indices: the S4 for amplitude scintillation and the phase deviation due to scintillations [3]. However, as more telecommunication systems are likely to work in frequency bands close to GNSS signals in the next years, monitoring of scintillation activity might be threatened by the presence of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) in the operation area. It is of interest to study the effects these systems may have on the estimation of scintillation indices due to unintentional leakages of power out of their allocated bandwidth [4]. Robust tracking of GNSS signals under such conditions must be guaranteed and it must also be ensured as best as possible that the typical scintillation indices are not affected by the additional error source.