Mathematical analyses of pulse interference signal on post-correlation carrier-to-noise ratio for the global positioning system receivers

Vulnerability of global positioning system (GPS) receiver to interference signals is one of the major issues of many applications, as the satellite navigation signal has a very low power under the noise floor level. To this end, pulse interference (PUI) may cause severe performance degradation to the GPS receivers. This study analyses the PUI effect on the GPS receiver correlator output. Novel and more accurate closed-form analytical expressions are derived for the PUI power at the correlator output. The post-correlation carrier-to-noise ratio for the GPS L1 coarse acquisition (C/A) signal is analytically derived in the presence of PUI and additive white Gaussian noise. In order to simplify the derived analytical expressions, a classification is done depending on the relationship between the C/A code spectrum and the PUI spectrum. Several PUI parameters were varied such as interference frequency, pulse period and duty cycle to investigate the influence of these parameters on the GPS correlator output.