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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

RF and Antenna Threats, Risks, and Mitigations for GNSS Receivers

The physical arrangement and design of jamming and spoofing, the RF propagation environment, the antenna patterns of the receiver, receiver motion, and RF component design in the receiver front-end all play a role in how much an adversary can impact PNT. The properties of GNSS antenna and RF components within the GNSS receiver front-end electronics are expected to be critical to the protection efficacy against PNT threats. Therefore, testing standards will necessarily involve characterization of these components at an RF level in order to establish PNT risks in relevant threat scenarios. The study team will develop and formalize the RF testing standards of GNSS antenna and front-end electronics. The team will apply their extensive understanding of RF testing chambers and simulated RF signal injection (using software-defined radios (SDRs) and lab RF equipment) as a key component of RF testing standard development. Mitigation methods for RF signal threats (jammers and spoofers) will involve specialized antennas with multiple modes or elements to support identification of threats via direction of arrival, polarization, etc. It will also involve front-end filtering, limiting, enhanced dynamic-range, and blanking techniques. Testing standards for these mitigation systems will require characterization of the efficacy of these approaches at an RF level. Furthermore, it is expected that testing standards will involve creation or simulation of RF signal environments. ++++++++++ (Task 3.1) RF PNT Threat Scenario Evaluation: The study team will study the impact of each PNT threat scenario on received GNSS performance at an RF level. ++++++++++ (Task 4.1) Resilient Receiver Antenna Validation (standards and guidelines): The study team will study the characterization and testing of specialized antenna based mitigation approaches.