Brent M. Ledvina

Assessing the Spoofing Threat: Development of a Portable GPS Civilian Spoofer

A portable civilian GPS spoofer is implemented on a digital signal processor and used to characterize spoofing effects and develop defenses against civilian spoofing. This work is intended to equip GNSS users and receiver manufacturers with authentication methods that are effective against unsophisticated spoofing attacks. The work also serves to refine the civilian spoofing threat assessment by demonstrating the challenges involved in mounting a spoofing attack.

Data-Driven Testbed for Evaluating GPS Carrier Tracking Loops in Ionospheric Scintillation

A large set of equatorial ionospheric scintillation data has been compiled, used to characterize features of severe scintillation that impact Global Positioning System phase tracking, and used to develop a scintillation testbed for evaluating tracking loops. The data-driven testbed provides researchers a tool for studying, and the receiver developers a tool for testing, the behavior of carrier tracking loops under realistic scintillation conditions. It is known that severe equatorial scintillation causes cycle slipping and, in the worst cases, complete loss of carrier lock. Testbed results indicate that cycle slips are primarily caused by the abrupt, near half-cycle phase changes that occur during the deep power fades of severe equatorial scintillation. For a class of standard tracking loops, parameter values that minimize scintillation-induced cycle slipping are identified.

GPS Carrier Tracking Loop Performance in the presence of Ionospheric Scintillations

The performance of several GPS carrier tracking loops is evaluated using wideband GPS data recorded during strong ionospheric scintillations. The aim of this study is to determine the loop structures and parameters that enable good phase tracking during the power fades and phase dynamics induced by scintillations. Constant-bandwidth and variable-bandwidth loops are studied using theoretical models, simulation, and tests with actual GPS signals. Constant-bandwidth loops with loop bandwidths near 15 Hz are shown to lose phase lock during scintillations. Use of the decision-directed discriminator reduces the carrier lock threshold by »1 dB relative to the arctangent and conventional Costas discriminators. A proposed variablebandwidth loop based on a Kalman filter reduces the carrier lock threshold by more than 7 dB compared to a 15-Hz constant-bandwidth loop. The Kalman filter-based strategy employs a soft-decision discriminator, explicitly models the eects of receiver clock noise, and optimally adapts the loop bandwidth to the carrier-to-noise ratio. In extensive simulation and in tests using actual wideband GPS data, the Kalman filter PLL demonstrates improved cycle slip immunity relative to constant bandwidth PLLs.

Equatorial anomaly effects on GPS scintillations in brazil

In a collaborative study, INPE and Cornell University have installed several Global Positioning System (GPS) based scintillation monitors over the Brazilian territory in order to study L Band scintillation. These scintillation monitors were developed by Cornell University to measure the amplitude scintillation observed at L1 (1.575 GHz) GPS signal and are sensitive to ionospheric irregularities of about 400 meters scale size. This paper describes some characteristics of the intensity of scintillations observed at three observation sites in Brazil: (1) Sao Luis (2.33 ° S, 44 ° W, dip latitude 1.3 ° S), located at magnetic equator, (2) Sao Jose dos Campos (23.21 ° S, 45.86 ° W, dip latitude 17.8 ° S), located under the equatorial anomaly peak and (3) Cuiaba (15.33 ° S, 56.46 ° W, dip latitude 6.1 ° S), an intermediate observation site located in between the magnetic equator and the equatorial anomaly peak. Analysis of data from January to March of 2000 showed that the occurrence percentage as well as the magnitude of the L Band scintillation increase with latitude from the magnetic equator to the equatorial anomaly crest as previously reported by Basu et al. (1988). Strong scintillation with S4 index exceeding 0.5 only has been observed under equatorial anomaly peak while at magnetic equator scintillation intensity (S4 index) did not exceed 0.3. Such studies from the network of stations set up by INPE and Cornell University in Brazil, where the effect of large declination controls the ESF statistics, will be very useful for developing a regional scintillation model for use in IRI.

Bit-wise parallel algorithms for efficient software correlation applied to a GPS software receiver

A set of efficient algorithms for processing code-division multiple-access spread spectrum signals has been developed. They make use of bit-wise parallelism to process 32 samples simultaneously. These algorithms have been implemented in a real-time global positioning system software receiver. The receiver consists of a radio-frequency front end, a system of shift registers, a digital data acquisition card, and software that runs on a 1.73-GHz PC. The PC performs base-band mixing and pseudorandom noise code correlations in a manner that directly simulates a hardware digital correlator.

GNSS Receiver Implementation on a DSP: Status, Challenges, and Prospects

A real-time GPS L1 C/A-code software receiver has been implemented on a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The receiver exploits FFT-based techniques to perform autonomous acquisition down to a threshold of C/N0 = 33 dB-Hz. Efficient correlation algorithms and robust tracking loops enable the receiver to track an equivalent of 43 L1 C/A-code channels in real time with a tracking threshold of 25 dB-Hz. This accomplishment represents a milestone in an ongoing effort to develop a low-cost, flexible, and capable GNSS receiver for use as a scientific instrument and for GNSS receiver technology development. This paper reports on the current design and capability of the DSPbased receiver, provides an overview of the challenges that are particular to embedded GNSS software receiver design, and discusses the prospects of DSP-based GNSS software receivers in relation to the multiple frequencies and higher bandwidths offered by modernized GNSS.

Analysis of Ionospheric Scintillations using Wideband GPS L1 C/A Signal Data

A non-real-time GPS receiver has been developed and tested for use in scintillation analysis. The receiver consists of a digital storage device and non-real-time software acquisition and tracking algorithms. The goal of this work is to shed light on the behavior of strongly scintillating signals: signals which cause conventional GPS receivers to lose carrier lock. The receiver collects wideband GPS L1 digital data sampled at 5.7 MHz using an RF front-end and stores it on disk for post-processing. It processes the data off-line to determine carrier signal amplitude and phase variations during scintillations. The main processing algorithms are traditional code delay and carrier frequency acquisition algorithms and special special signal processing algorithms that effectively function as a delay-locked loop and phase-locked loop. The tracking algorithms use non-causal smoothing techniques in order to optimally reconstruct the phase and amplitude variations of a scintillating signal. These techniques are robust against the deep power fades and strong phase fluctuations characteristic of scintillating signals. To test the receiver, scintillation data were collected in Cachoeira Paulista, Brazil, from December 4 to 6, 2003. The data set spans several hours and includes times when one or more satellite signals are scintillating. The smoothing algorithm has been used to determine the carrier amplitude and phase time histories of the scintillating signals along with the distortion of the pseudorandom noise (PRN) code’s autocorrelation function. These quantities provide a characterization of scintillation that can be used to study the physics of scintillations or to provide off-line test cases to evaluate a tracking algorithm’s ability to maintain signal lock during scintillations.

The GPS Assimilator: A Method for Upgrading Existing GPS User Equipment to Improve Accuracy, Robustness, and Resistance to Spoofing

A conceptual method is presented for upgrading existing GPS user equipment, without requiring hardware or software modiflcations to the equipment, to improve the equipment’s position, velocity, and time (PVT) accuracy, to increase its PVT robustness in weak-signal or jammed environments, and to protect the equipment from counterfeit GPS signals (GPS spooflng). The method is embodied in a device called the GPS Assimilator that couples to the radio frequency (RF) input of an existing GPS receiver. The Assimilator extracts navigation and timing information from RF signals in its environment|including non-GNSS signals|and from direct baseband aiding provided, for example, by an inertial navigation system, a frequency reference, or the GPS user. The Assimilator optimally fuses the collective navigation and timing information to produce a PVT solution which, by virtue of the diverse navigation and timing sources on which it is based, is highly accurate and inherently robust to GPS signal obstruction and jamming. The Assimilator embeds the PVT solution in a synthesized set of GPS signals and injects these into the RF input of a target GPS receiver for which an accurate and robust PVT solution is desired. A prototype software-deflned Assimilator device is presented with three example applications.