Phone Broadcasting at 1.58 MHz

[Android Central Question]

My work just informed me that my phone is broadcasting at 1.58 MHz @ 30dB. This is the same signal bandwidth as GPS. I know it should not be able to do that if it is operating properly. Pixel XL running Android V9.0. It does not matter if my location services is on/off or if the GPS icon appears at the top of the screen.

 

[methodman89]

Where do you work? How did they arrive at that?

 

[androidfan6789]

We have a signal analyzer. It was causing some interference with some of our GPS tools we use.

 

[Rukbat]

1.58MHz is in the AM broadcast band. Maybe you mean 1.58GHz? (That's just 1,000 times the frequency, in a field in which 1/1000 of that frequency difference is enough to separate some signals.)

Since it's a Pixel, contact Google tech support and speak to them. They probably won't have any clue about what you're talking about, but you have to start with them. What you want is for them to get to engineering so engineering can tell them to replace your phone. (A phone interfering with GPS signals is so illegal that one company had to pull a product off the market for something like that.) They're pretty good about defective phones anyway, and if one of them is violating the law, not only will they replace it, they'll want to get their hands on it to make sure it doesn't ever happen again.

(Technically, the local oscillator in the GPS is putting out enough signal to be received by your spectrum analyzer. [It's probably at -30db, not 30db, which is still a whopping signal. Your phone signal is probably around -80db or even lower. A 30db signal at GPS frequencies would block out GPS reception for at least a few miles. 30dbw works out to 1,000 Watts.] The people who told you about it could explain it more fully, if you're interested.)

 

[methodman89]

Rukbat is on the right track.
Have them rescan while you toggle gps off and also when you initiate a phone call.

 

[androidfan6789]

Yes 1.58 GHz... sorry, I'm a mechanical engineer, I know enough about electrons to just be dangerous. We checked the status during a phone call and also while enabling/disabling location services/gps and it was still present in both instances.

 

[methodman89]

Try to force stop your GPS, as it may be that your transiever stays powered on.

 

[Rukbat]

The GPS receiver won't turn off if you force stop an app, but it should turn off if you disable location. If it doesn't, there's a really big problem in that phone.