GPS spoofer countermeasure effectiveness based on signal strength, noise power, and C/N₀ measurements

Abstract

SUMMARY Spoofing sources can effectively disrupt a GPS receiver during the acquisition phase by generating multiple false correlation peaks and increasing the noise floor. Such deceptive correlation peaks can mislead the GPS receiver into acquiring the spoofer generated signals rather than the authentic signals. Also, the spoofer can increase the receiver noise floor to bury the authentic signals in the noise and at the same time generate correlation peaks with amplitudes commensurate with reasonable C/N0 expectations. The main focus of this paper is on assessment of the reduced effectiveness of the GPS spoofer countermeasure during acquisition where the GPS receiver utilizes C/N0 discrimination. As shown, whereas the C/N0 discrimination is of limited effectiveness, with a modest circuit modification, the receiver can measure the absolute power of the correlation peaks, which is an effective means of detecting and discriminating spoofer sources. It will be shown that employing absolute power monitoring technique considerably reduces the vulnerability region of the receiver compared with the C/N0 monitoring techniques. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Spoofing Detection Using GNSS/INS/Odometer Coupling for Vehicular Navigation

“…Several related contributions have been made with focus on different layers of the receiver including antenna, IF samples, acquisition, tracking and navigation [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. The spoofing detection techniques implemented in the pre-despreading and signal processing layers of a receiver are effective and can detect spoofing attacks faster than the methods implemented in the navigation layer [13]. However, these techniques require several modifications to current receiver designs.…”

“…In addition to the above standalone approaches, spoofing attacks can be detected by checking the consistency of the navigation solutions under test with other reference sources [13,14]. Consistency checks can be performed in different ways including intra-system, inter-system, multi-frequency and multi-sensor approaches.…”

GPS Vulnerability to Spoofing Threats and a Review of Antispoofing Techniques

“…This procedure can effectively mislead those spoofing detection techniques that are based on C/N 0 monitoring. As a consequence, the receiver might be tracking the higher power spoofing correlation peaks while its C/N 0 measurement does not show any abnormalities [12]. (b) Absolute Power Monitoring.…”

“…Hence, as it is shown in Figure 4, the vulnerability region of the absolute power monitoring receiver is much smaller than the vulnerability region of the C/N 0 monitoring receiver. Furthermore, if the receiver is able to detect the absolute receiver power more accurately, it can considerably reduce the size of its vulnerability window in the presence of a spoofing attack [12].…”

Hypothesis testing methods to detect spoofing attacks: a test against the TEXBAT datasets

“…The most robust technique is represented by the use of antenna arrays (Magiera and Katulski 2013;Montgomery et al 2009;Konovaltsev et al 2013), which allow for the detection of the angle of arrival (AOA) or the signal phase difference, but their use in mass market applications is still difficult due to the additional hardware and cost. Techniques based on power measurements are more affordable than those using the automatic gain control (AGC) to indicate an increase in the incoming signal power (Akos 2012;Jafarnia-Jahromi et al 2012b). Nonetheless, such techniques might not be effective when the power of the spoofing signal and the true signal match.…”