Radio frequency compatibility of an RFID tag on glideslope navigation receivers

A process is demonstrated to show compatibility between a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag and an aircraft glideslope (GS) radio receiver. The particular tag chosen was previously shown to have significant peak spurious emission levels that far exceeded the emission limits in the GS aeronautical band. The spurious emissions are emulated in the study by capturing the RFID fundamental transmission and playing back the signal in the GS band. The signal capturing and playback are achieved with a vector signal generator and a spectrum analyzer that can output the in-phase and quadrature components (IQ). The simulated interference signal is combined with a desired GS signal before being injected into a GS receiverpsilas antenna port for interference threshold determination. Minimum desired propagation loss values to avoid interference are then computed and compared against actual propagation losses for several aircraft.