Feasibility of using an S-band GNSS carrier by comparing with L and C bands

Abstract Global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) play an important role in both military and civilian industries, but most of the existing GNSS carriers are crowded in the L band. Although some modulations, such as binary-offset-carrier (BOC) and its modifications, can reduce the mutual interference of one GNSS signal to others, the exhausted L-band frequencies are still the bottleneck to improve GNSS performance further. The problem can be solved if the GNSS carriers can be allocated to other bands, such as S band (2483.5-2500 MHz) and C band (5010-5030 MHz), which adjoin L band. In this paper, the feasibility of using an S-band GNSS carrier is evaluated systematically. The transmission path loss, the transmission errors, and the signal reception performance of an S-band carrier are analyzed by comparison with an existing L-band carrier and a potential C-band one. The impacts of the S-band carrier both on the satellite payload and on the receiver are discussed. The compatibility of the S-band signal with the existing signals in the adjacent band is also addressed. The conclusive remarks presented will be helpful to implement an S-band carrier.