GSS6400 Record & Playback
Sometimes testing using real world signals is the easiest way to confirm successful operation in the presence of real world impairments. In the past, expensive and unrepeatable field trials have been required to perform this testing. Now Spirent's GSS6400 GNSS Record Playback System (RPS) brings the real world into the lab with two-bit fidelity.
A GNSS RF RPS does exactly as the name suggests: the whole RF spectrum in a specified bandwidth is recorded, down-converted, digitized, and stored as samples on suitable storage media. For playback, the samples are converted back to an analogue signal, up-converted, and output at the original RF frequency.
In addition to the wanted GNSS signals, noise in the form of unwanted interference is present. This noise is from many sources such as other RF communications, broadband interference from electrical systems (vehicle ignition etc.), and even radiation from solar activity. In terms of the recorded GNSS signals, these will be as they arrive incident upon the recorder's antenna, so they will include the effects of the propagation environment and the satellite and observer's motion. This includes multipath in its full richness, fades, signal loss and carrier phase/signal group delay due to atmospheric influences.
To learn more, download our free GSS6400 Record Playback Systems e-Book.