New initiatives from the Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP), a program of the European Space Agency (ESA), have targeted counter-jamming and counter-spoofing efforts, as Europe’s Galileo program gains progressive foothold in the marketplace, particularly in safety-critical systems such as driverless cars.
“We are looking for new and disruptive ideas in navigation and that is why we created NAVISP,” said ESA Director General Jan Wörner.
GIDAS is a scalable and flexible real-time GNSS Interference Detection and Analysis System. (Image: TeleConsult Austria)
TeleConsult Austria is working with JH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences on the GNSS Interference Detection and Analysis System (GIDAS), to automatically detect, classify and pinpoint all intentional interference sources within a given area by monitoring all civil GNSS signals in real time.The aim is to build a multi-frequency scalable system. GIDAS plans to begin commercialization at the end of 2019.
France Developpement Conseil has developed a hardened satnav module called DRACONAV, combining hardware and software to combat jamming and spoofing. Targeting intelligent transport applications, it seeks to identify cyber attacks and continue to provide authenticated positioning information as they occur.
DRACONAV would deliver a level of confidence to let users know if they can continue relying on the data the module delivers, and yield an estimate of the receiver’s true position as the attack continues. A prototype design has undergone more than 3,000 kilometers of field tests and is moving to industrialization.
Intecs Solutions of Italy has created G-Passion, using a software-defined radi
o to analyze a few tens or hundreds of milliseconds of Galileo signals at a time, to tell the user whether or not the signal is authentic or spoofed.
In Romania, InSpace Engineering’ MARGOT assesses the multipath and interference impact on PNT information in maritime environments.
The Norwegian company SINTEF is developing its Advanced Radio Frequency Interference Detection, Alerting and Analysis System (ARFIDAAS) project, offering as wide a spectral coverage as possible — including all current GPS, Galileo and GLONASS signals — to identify disruptions due to intentional or unintentional interference.
UK company Helix Technologies has developed compact helical antennas, built around a dielectric ceramic core, primarily for driverless cars. The multi-frequency design aims to reduce susceptibility to interference as well as multipath. Testing will soon get underway in several European cities.