GNSS Smart Traceability and Anti-spoofing
GSTA PROJECT Overview
GSTA (GNSS Smart Traceability and Anti-spoofing) is a follow on of a previous project funded by ESA: the GALIST project (Galileo Smart Traceability) which had the objective, exploiting GNSS technology, to certify the position of food production events in order to support the “made in” value added. In order to achieve the stated goal, GNSS positioning solution has to be resilient against spoofing attacks.
The GSTA project aims to prototype, implement, test and demonstrate services in the domain of the resilient PNT User Segment through a totally novel design concept: the Hybrid GNSS Receiver (HGR), The new approach combines different sources of information in order to implement robust and resilient equipment able to detect and survive to most spoofing and jamming attacks. The project development is based on the exploitation of a patented anti-spoofing algorithm based on the integration of data coming from three different sources of information:
- The GNSS, for continuous, accurate and worldwide available timing and positioning;
- The ADS-B, as source of a priori unknown messages in terms of content, signal characteristics and emission time. By design, in fact, ADS-B messages are transmitted by each airplane at random times, in order to avoid message conflicts in accessing the shared ALOHA channel at 1090 MHz (pure ALOHA access);
- A secure synchronisation mechanism based on a communication network, to provide alternative timing through a secure channel.
The unique combination of the three elements above, or part of them when not all contemporary available, provide capabilities to detect the most likely spoofing attacks, i.e. those based on “signal retransmission” (meaconing) and even those based on “signal simulation”.
In order to achieve its challenging goal the team includes two partners:
- Fondazione LINKS (formerly known as Istituto Superiore Mario Boella) for its expertise in GNSS and in particular in the field of SW GNSS receivers, SDR based;
- Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM) involved for its strong expertise in the field of time services.
GSTA PROJECT Schedule
At present, the project is running smoothly in accordance with the schedule. The first Milestone PM1 and second Milestone PM2 audio conference has been held, showing the progress achieved at the dates and successfully passed.
The documents delivered had included:
- spoofing scenarios and Anti-spoofing Solution
- HW/SW COTS state of art (SOA)
- preliminary results of simulations and data analyses
- prototype assessment
- system scenario and requirements
A preliminary Design for ADS-B Processor,GNSS Processor and Network Time Processor (Local Oscillator) has been identified.
The SOA analysis have been concluded and the resulting baseline for the prototypes and low cost implementation is composed by the SDRPlay RSPDuo SRD-FE (approx. 300 € , see https://www.sdrplay.com/rspduo/), already identified in the GSTA proposal, and the Raspberry Pi4, the latest and more performing version of the raspberry product family.
The prototyping activity is on going, according schedule as shown in figure below.
The Threats analysis is going on and will provide solid information about the potential attacks to be considered, therefore guiding the identification of performance requirements expected for the application. The design of System and not last the Viability Analysis are in working.
