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In GPS receivers, measurement of the carrier power‐to‐noise density, C/N₀, is important for determining whether the code and carrier tracking loops are in lock, controlling the response of the receiver to low signal‐to‐noise environments, and determining the signal‐to‐noise environment in order to assess or predict receiver performance. However, in a weak signal or high‐interference environment, the C/N₀ measurements can be very noisy. To mitigate this problem, an investigation was conducted into methods of signal‐to‐noise measurement. Three C/N₀ measurement techniques were investigated by theoretical analysis and simulation study, and performance was compared with a range of different smoothing times. These were the established narrow‐to‐wideband power ratio method, a correlator comparison method, and a discriminator output statistics method. All were found to be suitable in low signal‐to …