Real World Spoofing Trials and Mitigation – Inside GNSS

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June 10, 2017

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Blog

Written by Editor

Editor’s Note: This working paper published by Inside GNSS is some great work by a group of satnav notables. It encourages use of sophisticated antennae with GPS/GNSS receivers as a way of greatly reducing the threat of spoofing. We heartily agree. There are number of other equipment and procedural measures users can take that will also help to counter jamming and spoofing. Unfortunately, few users seem willing to go to the time and expense of employing them.

Real World Spoofing Trials and Mitigation

Via Direction of Arrival Discrimination

This article demonstrates that a synthetic aperture antenna can reliably detect and mitigate even sophisticated spoofing attacks rendered against Global Navigation Satellite Systems. The direction-of-arrival is a reliable metric to discriminate spoofing signals from line-of-sight (LOS) signals and to also localize one or more spoofers with high angular resolution of two degrees.

JÜRGEN DAMPF, WOLFGANG BÄR, JÓN WINKEL, LEOŠ MERVART, JOSÉ-ÁNGEL ÁVILA-RODRÍGUEZ, AND RIGAS IOANNIDES WITH GÜNTER HEIN

Working Papers explore the technical and scientific themes that underpin GNSS programs and applications. This regular column is coordinated by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Günter Hein, head of Europe’s Galileo Operations and Evolution.

Generation and transmission of faked GNSS signals – so-called spoofing – poses a major threat to GNSS. Spoofing has received considerable attention in recent years, but conclusive assessments or proven countermeasures have still not been found. This article summarizes experience gained while conducting real-world spoofing attacks, with one or two transmission antennas. They were conducted using a modified GNSS radio-frequency (RF) signal generator. A reliable countermeasure against spoofing is direction-of-arrival discrimination and this was realized using a rotating GNSS antenna employing synthetic aperture processing and an adaptive beamforming algorithm. This GNSS receiver/antenna system not only increases the resilience of GNSS reference networks, which are otherwise very vulnerable against sophisticated spoofing attacks, but also allows us to localize the spoofer with high accuracy. It also provides an excellent tool for studying GNSS signal reflections.

PNT is the quiet backbone of everything but too many leaders still don't see the risk.

But you do. You understand the systems, the dependencies, the failure chains. That insight is rare — and it's exactly what your country needs right now. Contact your government leaders and industry decision-makers and tell them resilient PNT isn't a feature — it's the foundation everything else depends on.

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