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WHITE PAPER

Microseconds from Disaster


How GPS interference can affect communications networks—and what you can do about it

Microseconds-from-Disaster-WP

In modern telecommunications networks, timing is everything. Precision timing is essential to synchronising activity across the network, ensuring that voice and data transmissions are delivered smoothly.

Obtaining precise time and distributing it across the network is a key challenge for network operators. Increasingly, they rely on the time signals broadcast by the GPS system (or another navigation satellite system) as a reference source.

Under the G.8272 recommendation recently published by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the level of precision required for next-generation 4G and LTE networks is just 100 nanoseconds—so any interruption of signals can be critical.

To understand how to address these issues, Spirent has created this white paper to help equipment vendors and service providers. It includes:

  • What are the sources of GPS interference?

  • How to test the impact of GPS interference?

  • How to assess system performance during interference events?

Download the White Paper