EAB Q&A: What is the most promising innovation in satellite navigation?

John Fischer

What is the most promising innovation in satellite navigation being introduced by BDS, Galileo, QZSS, or NavIC?

“Two things are having an immediate impact: authentication methods, such as Galileo’s Open Service-Navigation Message Authentication (OS-NMA), and the proliferation of correction services for high accuracy. Navigation message authentication offers a practical, easy-to-implement defense against several (though not all) types of spoofing attacks. QZSS and NavIC offer this too. And though paid correction services have been available for some time, Galileo’s High Accuracy Service (HAS) will bring it into the mainstream. Sometimes innovation is just applying simple techniques in a useful, efficient manner.”

— John Fischer
Safran Navigation & Timing 

For critical infrastructure, how good a remedy are multi-constellation receivers to GNSS vulnerability?

“Multi-constellation receivers do not do much to combat jamming and spoofing; they only detect failures in a constellation itself through comparison. Since they all are open standards, a good spoofer can fake all the systems simultaneously. Multi-frequency receivers are a bit more resistant to jamming, since one must jam multiple bands, but since all the bands are relatively close, the barrier is not high. To be truly resilient, you need diverse, redundant PNT sensors — IMUs, CRPAs, strong signals of opportunity, lidars, etc. — in addition to GNSS receivers.”

— John Fischer
Safran Navigation & Timing