Experimental validation of GNSS repeater detection based on antenna arrays for maritime applications

Abstract

In this work, we present an antenna array-based algorithm to detect GNSS repeater and/or spoofing attacks with an experimental validation. With an array receiver capable of measuring the impinging ranging signals direction of arrival in terms of azimuth and elevation, it is possible to estimate the antenna platforms attitude. The fact that this information is computed (w.r.t. a reference frame) during the position calculation is used. We propose an algorithm aiming to find the relation between both representations. This mapping defines the receiver's attitude in terms of pitch, roll and yaw angle. The residual of this mapping is used to construct a quality metric for the mapping. If a threshold is undershot, spoofing/repeating is indicated. The performance is demonstrated using software simulations. To show the capabilities under realistic conditions, a test platform is described. It consists of a real-time array receiver and a sampling device enabling post-processing. A maritime measurement campaign including two vessels-one acting as receiver and the other acting as transmitter-is portrayed. Finally, the real-time and post-processing performance of the algorithm is evaluated.

Increasing International Civil Aviation Resilience: A Proposal for Nomenclature, Categorization and Treatment of New Interference Threats

“…Tests under laboratory conditions are reported in [24] and show the vulnerability of aeronautical receivers for different types of spoofing. Experimental results confirm the feasibility of certain attacks [25] [26].…”

“…CountermeasuresWhat follows is a brief description of each countermeasure: Multi-Element Antennas: Measures based on multi-element antennas. This countermeasure includes CRPA null techniques to null the direction of arrival of the jamming/spoofing source(s)[42] and other multi-element antenna techniques against jamming/spoofing as shown in[25] [43][44]. They are effective against most interference threats.…”

GNSS spoofing detection through spatial processing

“…One steady state detection approach is to use the spatial diversity present in GNSS signals. Generally at the expense of hardware changes, like using a dithering antenna (Psiaki et al., 2013), two antennas (Borio & Gioia, 2016; Psiaki et al., 2014), an entire array of antennas (Appel et al., 2019; Appel et al., 2015; Esswein & Psiaki, 2019; Konovaltsev et al., 2014; Konovaltsev et al., 2013; Magiera & Katulski, 2015; Meurer et al., 2016; Meurer et al., 2012) or a Dual Polarization Antenna (DPA) (Lo et al., 2018; Lo et al., 2020), metrics reflecting the different directions of arrival (DoA)s of the GNSS signals are derived. Under nominal conditions, these metrics will be different for each satellite as an antenna receives signals from satellites distributed across the entire sky.…”

“…First, we cast the detection as a hypothesis test that guarantees a chosen false alert probability that is the Uniformly Most Powerful Invariant (UMPI) test independent of nuisance parameters (Lehmann & Romano, 2005). We formulate hypotheses that enable a fast, online computation of the detection threshold for any DoA‐based approach that has direction measurements at its disposal, like the techniques described by (Appel et al., 2019; Appel et al., 2015; Esswein & Psiaki, 2019; Konovaltsev et al., 2014; Konovalstev et al., 2013; Meurer et al., 2016; Meurer et al., 2012). We compare our results to several existing approaches and achieve a more than 50% lower missed detection probability.…”

Interference and multipath suppression with space-time adaptive beamforming for safety-of-life maritime applications

“…Additionally, it allows to compare the different algorithms and settings under reproducible conditions, since the data set is recorded. During the campaign, different experiments with slightly modified setups have been carried out (for repeater/spoofing experiments: see [33]). The platform can be divided into two parts.…”