Lockheed Martin SR Engineer - JSC Houston

NOAA GOES Ground station engineers and technicians experiencing interference and data outages may find that any newly installed 4G LTE relay antennas may be the problem. We started with intermittent interference drop outs to our GOES East and West receive strength and image quality. Left us scratching our heads, until another 4G LTE relay antenna was place within 200 meters from our two 4.5m GOES dish antennas and the receive signal strength went below threshold levels as soon as it went on line both during test and operation. A spec An test showed the GOES signal ground reference typically at -85 dB was being influenced up to -76 dB which caused 9dB drop between our LNB to receiver peak signal gain typically EbNo levels of 15 dB went to 6 dB. Our remedy fix was to by a +/-17 Mhz narrow band pass filter with -30 dB suppression centered at the GOES 1684 MHz frequency. Since then we have upgraded one dish to GOES R which has filters manufactured into the LNB Circulator which is filtering the influence of the 4G LTE antenna. I have concerns for future filtering requirements with the advent of 5G. As we all have to work together in this world of congested frequency bandwidths. Hope this helps other NOAA GOES ground stations Engineers and designers of the 4G and 5G LTE product lines.