Proudly Distributed by NexGen Digital A Proportional Defense Strategy Adding GNSS Resilience to Critical Mobile Assets at the Edge

Sure, we want to back up every GNSS-based system with a $100K Cesium clock with 1x10-14 stability, a $100K 12-element CRPA antenna with a SAASM or M-Code receiver and a high-end INS with 0.01deg accuracy. Sadly, the reality is we almost always can’t afford it, either in terms of cost or in terms of SWaP constraints (Size, Weight and Power). Often, the economics are simply not justified.

GNSS signals are very weak and easily disrupted from potentially miles away by low cost jammers that are widely available on the internet for $50. Individuals and other entities interfere with GNSS signals by jamming them in support of criminal activities or simply to escape tracking of their daily movements. 

What are we to do then? We can hope and pray we are lucky and that no one will try to jam our systems. Or maybe, we can just accept that the systems will be disabled for periods of time when they are occasionally jammed. Or, we can deploy a proportional defense solution that makes our GNSS systems significantly more resilient, with minimal integration effort, minimal impact on the total price of the system, and minimal impact on the payload and mission time.

GNSS — A Common Thread for All

Like a common thread going through all different facets of our everyday life, GNSS position, navigation, and timing (PNT) has become an almost indispensable silent utility creating economic advantages transforming lifestyles and businesses.

According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) there are 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, the national economy, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof. The DHS considers 13 of the 16 sectors to be critically dependent on the availability of said PNT data. This crucial data comes almost entirely from GNSS.

Both Europe and the United States have undertaken initiatives to sample and assess how common and widely dispersed jamming attacks are on critical GNSS systems. Both came to alarming conclusions: the GNSS jamming threat is growing at a disturbing rate and critical systems, without protection, are very likely to be impacted by it sooner or later. 

Is This the Definition of a Single Point of Failure?

Despite the fact that the White House issued an executive order on strengthening national resilience through responsible use of PNT service, let’s face it, we have to take care of our own assets and our customers’ systems because nobody else will.

Let’s consider two types of attacks on our GNSS sources: 

1A nation-wide outage — that could originate from a malfunction or attack from a foreign entity.

This would be catastrophic but highly unlikely because this sort of sophisticated attack requires the resources of a nation state. 

A localized attack — that affects GNSS based systems from few 100s of meters away to a few kilometers away.

This is a very easy to perform attack that could be carried out intentionally by anyone who buys a simple jammer online for less than $100.

Jamming attacks have become more commonplace and more dangerous. Criminals, terrorists, and other adversaries create havoc and mayhem by jamming GPS signals. Overcoming and ensuring continued operations during jamming disruptions is critical. 

Asymmetric Warfare

According to Merriam-Webster Asymmetric warfare is “warfare that is between opposing forces which differ greatly in military power and that typically involves the use of unconventional weapons and tactics (such as those associated with guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks)”. This is exactly what we are talking about — this is it! When the bad guys use a $100 GPS jammer they buy online to disable  a bank’s multi-million dollar trading system or when a jammer is used near a country’s border, disabling high-end autonomous tractors. Especially when we see these same inexpensive jammers  bring down a $50K construction drone or $100K reconnaissance drone.

A New Approach

In “The Art of War”, Sun Tzu states that, “what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.” His focus was on defeating the enemy’s plan and not being distracted by the enemy’s chaos.

Traditionally, for critical military systems such as fighter jets or radars, the mandate is extensive mil-spec’ed GNSS protection solutions. However, for 97% of critical GNSS-dependent applications, this level of shielding and the associated costs is simply not relevant. Hence, a new approach that detects and mitigates the attack is required: Proportional Defense.

In order to address these threats to mobile assets in the field, we must adopt minimal C-SWaP (Cost, Size, Weight and Power) solutions with an easily retrofit technology that strengthens our GNSS links and makes them much more resilient to these attacks.

infiniDome’s GPSdome is the solution. Packaged in a tiny box or an even smaller board-level solution, GPSdome adopts Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) principles, but without the cost and highly stringent export control restrictions associated with these large, inflexible and expensive CRPA solutions. GPSdome automatically detects, alerts and dynamically protects the system by attenuating a jamming signal without any action or involvement with the operator. This defense makes the GNSS system it protects 50 times more resilient to a jamming attack. Its main advantages are:

At 50g (PCB level) to 150g (fully housed) it is at least 10x lighter and smaller than any other solution

Drawing less than 1W makes little strain on any system it protects

It protects GPS L1 by creating a single null attenuating any incoming jamming signal

Passing through GLONASS G1 and GPS L2 allows for maximal number of satellites supported

Using off-the-shelf GNSS antennas deployed almost anywhere, allows for maximum flexibility for installation on a building roof, on a vehicle’s side-mirrors or even on a small quadcopter’s frame 

Introducing a fixed 100ns latency allows for perfect support of timing systems

Working with almost ANY GNSS receiver makes it a perfect “brown-field” upgrade allowing customers to use existing systems and infrastructure

Despite of their traditional “ultimate defense or no defense at all” mantra, even the technological military entities are adopting the approach of a Proportional Defense. This is the case of the IDF which decided to toughen its drones in reconnaissance missions on its borders with infiniDome solutions and the US-military, which is working closely with infiniDome on bringing customized, proportional defense to its wheeled vehicles 

About the Author

Omer SHARAR is co-founder and CEO of infiniDome. Leveraging his deep knowledge and experience in the GPS timing and synchronization world, Omer co-founded infiniDome in 2016 with a goal of protecting wireless communications of UAS, vehicles & critical infrastructure from jamming attacks.

Omer held lead roles at Focus Telecom designing GPS-based sync solutions for customers around the world. Prior to that, he was Senior Engineer at Utilight Solar Printing Systems, and head of Software & Control R&D team at HP Scitex.Omer holds a BSc. in Mathematics and CS from Ben Gurion University, and MBA from IDC Herzliya.