GNSS Coexistence Experiments Using a Vibrating Intrinsic Reverberation Chamber

There is no standardized way of performing radiated global navigation satellite system (GNSS) coexistence tests. ETSI 303 413 describes a radiated measurement technique of testing GNSS receivers with embedded antenna in an anechoic chamber but without clear levels, and only for a very narrow frequency range. Furthermore, a wideband noisy amplifier is needed, and thus the requisite for a very specific band-stop filter. This article discusses a method to perform a radiated coexistence measurement on a GNSS antenna and receiver using a reverberation chamber, and specifically a vibrating intrinsic reverberation chamber (VIRC), and for a much wider frequency band. The VIRC is increasing the field strength levels and therefore no noisy amplifier is needed. Based on the test method indicated by ETSI 303 413 requiring an anechoic chamber and a GNSS signal generator, a new test setup is proposed here. The test setup is composed–amongst others—of a VIRC and a GNSS repeater. The application of the method in a reverberant electromagnetic environment, i.e., VIRC, introduces the need of defining an alternative way to evaluate the signal reception degradation of the equipment under test. Such an evaluation method is proposed in this article based on empirical test results on a commercial off the shelf GNSS receiver.