GPS-Dependent Systems: Vulnerabilities to Electromagnetic Attacks

Abstract

The GPS is a satellite navigation system that provides location and time information. Such a system currently supports critical applications for military, civil and commercial users worldwide and is accessible to any operator by using a single GPS receiver. However, although being too dependent on GPS signals, just a few of these applications present some kind of countermeasure to electromagnetic attacks, showing a high level of vulnerability to intentional attacks. In this paper, we pose questions and situations related to security and vulnerability of different kinds of platforms/vectors and systems which directly afflict the situational awareness of operators. Experiments were made with different general GPS receivers as a function of distance and incidence angle, showing that they fail to work even at low jamming powers (−25 and 0 dBm at 10 m). More complex GPS systems, such as aeronautical receivers, were also tested, losing completely the tracking at −30 dBm, when a 0° (levelled) and 10 m far electromagnetic jamming signal is incident on its antenna. A specific open source, free software (JammPy) allows extending these experimental results, providing a roadmap and estimating how much jamming power is necessary to cause damage to these systems.

Geolocal – A New System for Geo-Referencing: Analysis of Base Distribution

“…Most countries depend on existing global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), mainly on the Global Positioning System (GPS) owned by the USA and operated by the United States Air Force. This is true not only for terrestrial navigation, but also for many critical and essential applications (Faria et al, 2016, 2018; Khan et al, 2020). Some of these applications are aerial and sea navigation, control of farming machinery, construction, mining, surveying, aerial photography, seaport automation, military and defence systems, economy, time accuracy, and ionospheric modelling (Islam and Kim, 2014; Li, Ge et al, 2015; Odolinski et al, 2020).…”

New Method for Increase of Noise Immunity of GPS Navigation Systems

“…the effect of atmospheric attenuation is not taken into account here. More strict formula for calculation of Р R taking into account the atmospheric attenuation is following [2][3][4]:…”

“…where: (θ Т ,φ т )-irradiation direction of transmitting antenna; (θ R , φ R , )-receipt direction of receiving antenna; Г Т -reflection coefficient of transmitting antenna; F R -reflection coefficient of receiving antenna; а т , а R -polarization vectors of transmitting and receiving antennas, accordingly; α-coefficient of attenuation of atmosphere. According to [2] receive (С/А) code, and if said ratio equals to 55dB the navigation accuracy code (P) is loosed. [7][8].…”

“…In the second case aim is forming false control signal not differing from real signal. For example, in 2001 the technical services of Iran carry out the forced controlled landing of droneRQ-170 Sentinel, forming relevant control signal[2]. As it is noted in [5-6], GPS navigation system is based on receipt of signals from height 20000 кm, which lead to low power of received signals.…”

Analysis of DME/DME Navigation Performance and Ground Network Using Stretched-Front-Leg Pulse-Based DME

“…However, it is well known that the GNSS signal can be easily lost in the presence of interference and jamming because of its weak signal power. In fact, South Korea experienced Global Positioning System (GPS) outages in 2010 and 2012 due to the strong GPS jamming signal transmitted from North Korea [ 1 ]. These events caused serious safety issues for aircraft and ships using GPS as a primary navigation source.…”