COHERENT TECHNICAL SERVICES, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A18-035

Description

Global Position System (GPS) spoofing, where malicious signals are used to manipulate GPS receivers into producing erroneous position, navigation and timing (PNT), is a real tactical threat in current military operations. There is a need to protect assured PNT (APNT) by detecting and localizing the sources of such spoofing. Such protection is needed, not only for fixed-site installations, but also for our warfighters on the move. This Phase II research will develop and test a mobile network of GPS spoofing detectors that is synchronized independently of GPS to detect and localize GPS spoofers. The system uses a multi-layered monitor design to detect single or multiple attackers using signal power and distortion, angle of arrival (AoA), GPS-INS, and network-based monitors. The network includes a relative-positioning and clock-synchronization function to ensure that all detectors have measurements that are precisely time-aligned, enabling time-difference of arrival (TDOA) localization of each detected GPS spoofer. Detectability is enhanced by chip scale atomic clocks, tactical-grade inertial measurement units, 3-axis magnetometer, and multi-antenna GPS AoA processing. While this phase of the project focuses on a vehicle-mounted detector, concepts of operations are in place for cooperative heterogenous networks of mounted and dismounted detectors in Phase III.