Low-complexity GNSS carrier leakage detection and estimation via abnormal direct current energy identification

Carrier leakage due to faults within the satellite payload results in a waste of transmit power and affects the receiver functions. The existing methods are generally performed in the transform domain with high computation load and are unable to estimate the carrier leakage power. This letter presents a low-complexity algorithm by monitoring the abnormal direct current component of baseband signal. The quantitative relationship between carrier leakage power and test statistics is derived here, and the capability of carrier leakage power estimation is provided. Analytical and simulation results show that it achieves a detection rate of more than 99% for carrier-to-noise ratio larger than 42 dB-Hz and coherent integration time larger than 10 ms. It also greatly saves millions of multiplications compared with the conventional frequency-domain method.