Towards Security-Optimized Placement of ADS-B Sensors

TL;DR

This paper addresses the security implications of ADS-B sensor placement, demonstrating that optimized sensor deployment enhances aircraft tracking security by reducing attack success rates through multi-objective optimization.

Contribution

It introduces a security-focused model for ADS-B sensor placement and applies multi-objective optimization to improve security against attacks.

Findings

Optimized sensor placement reduces attack success rates.

Security-aware placement improves coverage redundancy.

Multi-objective optimization effectively balances coverage and security.

Abstract

Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) sensors deployed on the ground are central to observing aerial movements of aircraft. Their unsystematic placement, however, results in over-densification of sensor coverage in some areas and insufficient sensor coverage in other areas. ADS-B sensor coverage has so far been recognized and analyzed as an availability problem; it was tackled by sensor placement optimization techniques that aim for covering large enough areas. In this paper, we demonstrate that the unsystematic placement of ADS-B sensors leads to a security problem, since the realization and possible deployment of protective mechanisms is closely linked to aspects of redundancy in ADS-B sensor coverage. In particular, we model ADS-B sensor coverage as a multi-dimensional security problem. We then use multi-objective optimization techniques to tackle this problem and derive security-optimized near-optimal placement solutions. Our results show how the location of sensors play a significant role in reducing the success rate of attackers by providing a sufficient number of sensors within a specific geographical area to verify location claims and reducing the exposure to jamming attacks.