L and S bands spectrum survey in the San Francisco bay area

Abstract

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a radio frequency (RF) communication system that consists of transmitters on the satellites and receivers on the ground. Because of substantial path loss, the received signal power from satellites is extremely weak and even below the thermal noise floor and as such is very sensitive to changes in the underlying noise floor. The goal of this work is to investigate the radio spectrum environment in the GPS band along with two additional bands, the Unified-S band and 2.4 GHz Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. The spectrum survey was conducted at various locations in the San Francisco Bay area including various urban, rural areas and airports and harbors which are operational significant to GPS. The measurement data collected in this study will provide a more accurate representation of the current status and the characteristics of the spectrum environment. Geographical variation within the sites will reveal correlation between the spectrum environment and the level of urbanization and also a comparative study on the frequency bands under different level of regulations can be used to investigate the effectiveness of the current spectrum policy.