High gain antenna measurements and signal characterization of the GPS satellites

Recent experimental results have shown that there are minor, yet measurable, differences between the signals broadcast from the GPS satellites. These differences are important to quantify so that they can be bounded to specify the operational performance of high integrity systems, such as GPS-based aircraft navigation and landing systems. This paper presents data collected using a 100 meter high gain antenna located in Green Bank, West Virginia. Wide band time domain samples of the raw RF signal of various GPS satellites were collected. Highlighted in the paper are the differences within the signals from each of the satellites.