Software-Defined Radio GNSS Instrumentation for Spoofing Mitigation: A Review and a Case Study

TL;DR

This paper reviews the use of software-defined radio (SDR) in GNSS systems for spoofing mitigation, highlighting the challenges and benefits of SDR flexibility through a case study analysis.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of SDR-based GNSS instrumentation for spoofing detection and presents a case study analyzing the computational requirements for spoofing mitigation.

Findings

SDR offers flexibility for GNSS spoofing mitigation.

Spoofing mitigation significantly increases computational load.

Case study demonstrates the trade-offs in SDR implementation.

Abstract

Recently, several global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) emerged following the transformative technology impact of the first GNSS: US Global Positioning System (GPS). The power level of GNSS signals as measured at the earths surface is below the noise floor and is consequently vulnerable against interference. Spoofers are smart GNSS-like interferers, which mislead the receivers into generating false position and time information. While many spoofing mitigation techniques exist, spoofers are continually evolving, producing a cycle of new spoofing attacks and counter-measures against them. Thus, upgradability of receivers becomes an important advantage for maintaining their immunity against spoofing. Software-defined radio (SDR) implementations of a GPS receiver address such flexibility but are challenged by demanding computational requirements of both GNSS signal processing and spoofing mitigation. Therefore, this paper reviews reported SDRs in the context of instrumentation capabilities for both conventional and spoofing mitigation modes. This separation is necessitated by significantly increased computational loads when in spoofing domain. This is demonstrated by a case study budget analysis.