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Solar Radio Burst Effects on Global Positioning System Receivers

Author
Cerruti, Alessandro Paolo
Abstract
This thesis presents a series of studies investigating solar radio burst effects on
Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers along with supporting instrumentation
and analysis techniques. Solar radio bursts are a space weather phenomenon with
its origins at the sun. Although solar radio bursts have been widely studied since
the 1960s and have been known to cause notable problems for radio communication
systems such as cell phone networks (Lanzerotti et al., 1999) their impact on GPS
was underestimated and largely ignored by the community. Recent large solar radio
burst events in conjunction with accurate carrier-to-noise measurements from GPS
receivers has allowed for the first precise qualitative and quantitative analysis of
their impact. To the receiver, a solar radio burst is a wide-band radio interference
source that causes an effective decrease in the received carrier-to-noise ratio. The
analysis of moderate events on 7 September 2005 allowed for the prediction that
larger solar radio bursts would present a significant challenge to GPS availability
as soon as the next solar maximum in 2011-2012 (Cerruti et al., 2006). The future
came sooner than expected when the record setting solar radio burst of 6 December
2006 caused wide-spread outages of GPS receivers. The event exceeded 1,000,000
SFU, was about ten times larger than any previously reported event, and was
all the more surprising since the solar radio bursts occurred near solar minimum.
These events had a drastic impact on several critical GPS systems utilized by
the scientific community, the Federal Aviation Administration, oil-rig operations, orbiting satellites, and surveying. The size of the December 2006 bursts strongly
suggests that the historical record may be inaccurate and raises the possibility
for even more intense solar radio bursts during the next solar maximum that will
significantly impact the operation of GPS receivers.
Sponsorship
Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-04-10105
Date Issued
2007-12-14Subject
Global Positioning System; GPS; solar radio bursts; solar flare; sun; carrier-to-noise ratio; signal; degradation
Type
dissertation or thesis video/moving image