QUNAV LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF151-147

Description

ABSTRACT:QuNav proposes to develop a GNSS Universal Anti-spoofing Receiver Design (GUARD) technology. GUARD will be implemented as an agile software-defined radio that separates the correlation engine from the signal processor. This allows for the implementation of GNSS signal correlation as a (reconfigurable) hardware while the rest of baseband signal processing is implemented in software. As a result, multi-GNSS signal processing will be implemented as an add-on to MGUE capabilities (i.e., by incorporating additional separate software-defined correlation engines and processing software modules) and without modifying correlation processing of secure military signals. A four-level protection scheme will be applied to multi-GNSS signals for spoofing identification and exclusion. This scheme operates at (i) pre-correlation level with baseband GNSS signal samples; (ii) post-correlation (i.e., IQ) level; (iii) measurement level, and (iv) solution level. Open-service GNSS signals will be fused into the overall PNT estimation only if they pass through this four-level protection scheme. To improve resiliency of MGUE, MGUE will be fused with validated multi-GNSS data both at signal-processing fusing (via mutual aiding for extended signal accumulation), and measurement level. Phase I will full develop the GUARD receiver mechanization, will validate it with simulated and experimental data, and will initially design a prototyping approach.BENEFIT:The GUARD technology has great potential for both military and private sector applications. Many military missions require a higher level assurance for PNT solutions accuracy, availability, integrity, and continuity in face of jamming and spoofing. In addition to DoD applications, protection of multi-GNSS signals against spoofing and their combined use in signal-degraded environments are also directly applicable to civil applications where intentional and unintentional interference becomes a growing concern. We will pursue commercialization for both DoD and civil applications. The main approach is to use Phase I and Phase II efforts to demonstrate the technology and then transition it to military systems and commercial products via licensing and acquisition.