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The knowledge bank of ESA’s R&D programmes

Techniques for Authentic Position/Velocity/Time (PVT)

Programme
TDE
Programme Reference
T606-409ET
Prime Contractor
QASCOM SRL
Start Date
End Date
Status
Closed
Country
Italy
Objectives

The objective of this activity is the comparative study of techniques at System /User Equipment level to support the authentication of the PVT solution and their assessment in realistic channel conditions. The activity also includes as necessary the design, development and testing of a tool in line with the proposed methodology.

Description

More and more applications rely on the Position and Time solution provided by a GNSS equipment to enable services of critical nature. Synchronization of cellular network, emergency vehicle location, time tagging of bank transactions, automated highways and lane control, aircraft movements on airports and precision landing are just examples of applications in need not only of high availability accuracy and integrity, but fundamentally requiring a very high level of "trust".How well this level of trust is placed, depends on the robustness of the GNSS-based solution against failure, disruption and interference. Today ,most implementations rely on simple Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitor (RAIM) approach or the hybridization with other sensors for the detection of this phenomena, while promising solution seems to become available at system, signal and navigation processing level. We focus here on the intentional interference specific threats. In particular malicious users who try to reproduce the authentic GNSS signal in order to misguide the receiver towards a wrong Position or timing solution. The availability of cheaper and more powerful hardware including sophisticated signal processing has made this possibility a real concern for many user communities, to which the current GNSS systems have not yet provided a solution, i.e. the provision of an authentication mechanism protecting the Open Service from those type of intentional interference. So investigation in this area is becoming a very hot topic in the domain of satellite navigation both at user and system level, since none of the current GNSS systems/augmentation currently provides authentication, although lot of research has been performed on the topic. This activity proposes to study broadly techniques of authentication of the Navigation solution at signal/system and user level, to test them in realistic scenarios and environment conditions. Proposed solutions include sophisticated signal processing, robust navigation filtering, exploitation of encrypted watermarking, multi-constellation processing, hybridization, and options for signal/message authentication. Tasks:- Definition of techniques for PVT authentication - Definition of methodology for performance evaluation - Definition of scenarios for performance assessment - Performance evaluation in the predefined scenarios

Application Domain
Navigation
Technology Domain
6 - RF Subsystems, Payloads and Technologies
Competence Domain
5-Radiofrequency & Optical Systems and Products
Keywords
0-Navigation Technologies
Initial TRL
TRL 1
Target TRL
TRL 3
Public Document
Executive Summary