Galileo ONSMA impacted by jamming: Finnish Geospatial Research Institute

November 6, 2026

Written by Editor

Image: GPSThreatMap.com

What’s new: A paper from Finland examining GNSS disruption found that strong jamming can overcome and degrade Galileo’s Open Navigation Service Message Authentication (ONSMA).

Why it’s important: ONSMA is intended to make signals more resilient and much less subject to spoofing. It does that, but this study showed some weaknesses.

What else to know:

  • The effectiveness of cryptographic authentication depends on the integrity and continuity of the underlying physical-layer signal. High-power jamming can significantly degrade signal quality, making it difficult to successfully decode authentication messages and potentially resulting in authentication failures.
  • The study team observed that all GNSS signals across the L1, L2, and L5 frequency bands were affected.

Analysis of real-world GNSS jamming in the Baltic region: RFI characterization, receiver response, and collaborative detection strategies

, , ,

Department of Navigation and Positioning, Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI-NLS), Vuorimiehentie 5, 02150 Espoo, Finland

Abstract

GNSS jamming deployed as an electronic warfare tactic near active conflict zones poses a growing threat to civilian navigation systems. This paper presents a static measurement campaign conducted in Eastern Estonia during a real-world jamming event. During the campaign, synchronized raw In-phase and Quadrature (I/Q) data and Septentrio Binary Format (SBF) receiver logs were collected. Spectral analysis of the raw I/Q data identifies a dominant interference source, whose type and spectral properties are systematically characterized. Cross-layer analysis reveals that, although the observed interference does not cause a complete loss of receiver tracking, measurable degradation is evident in C/N0, tracking loop jitter, and code frequency deviation across affected signals, with a corresponding impact on positioning accuracy. The results further indicate that Galileo Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) is sensitive to the observed interference levels, as demonstrated by satellite-specific authentication failures and a drop in overall authentication availability during jamming episodes, even in the absence of spoofing signals. This finding suggests a previously understudied indirect vulnerability of the OSNMA service under moderate real-world jamming conditions. A multi-metric collaborative detection concept combining pre-correlation domain and receiver-internal features is also discussed to improve detection confidence over single-metric approaches. The complete dataset, including raw I/Q data and SBF logs, comprises recordings of interference observed near a conflict zone, is released as open data to support the development and benchmarking of GNSS interference detection and mitigation algorithms.

 

What Can YOU Do? How Can YOU Help?

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.

Start the Conversation

Use our Resilient PNT Key Talking Points to make the case.

U.S. Advocates

Find your representatives at Congress.gov, then use our email template to reach them in minutes.

When you get a response, let us know. Every conversation strengthens the mission.