ADS-B Crowd-Sensor Network and Two-Step Kalman Filter for GNSS and ADS-B Cyber-Attack Detection.

Mauro Leonardi,Gheorghe Sirbu

doi:10.3390/s21154992

Abstract

Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast is an Air Traffic Control system in which aircraft transmit their own information (identity, position, velocity, etc.) to ground sensors for surveillance purposes. This system has many advantages compared to the classical surveillance radars: easy and low-cost implementation, high accuracy of data, and low renewal time, but also limitations: dependency on the Global Navigation Satellite System, a simple unencrypted and unauthenticated protocol. For these reasons, the system is exposed to attacks like jamming/spoofing of the on-board GNSS receiver or false ADS-B messages’ injection. After a mathematical model derivation of different types of attacks, we propose the use of a crowd sensor network capable of estimating the Time Difference Of Arrival of the ADS-B messages together with a two-step Kalman filter to detect these attacks (on-board GNSS/ADS-B tampering, false ADS-B message injection, GNSS Spoofing/Jamming). Tests with real data and simulations showed that the algorithm can detect all these attacks with a very high probability of detection and low probability of false alarm.

Highlights

Sensors 2021, 21, 4992. https://The Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) system is considered to be the backbone of the future air traffic control system [1,2]
We propose the use of these networks to detect the most important threats on the ADS-B and GlobalNavigation Satellite System (GNSS) channels, in particular:
Note that GNSS Spoofing can be very dangerous because the on-board navigation systems use the GNSS; it means that both the pilot and the controller are deceived, this may cause the total loss of the control of the aircraft; in case of ADS-B spoofing, one or more ghost aircraft, having false positions, can appear in any place in the world, and not necessarily near the ADS-B stations that receive the signals; in general, there is no correlation between the ADS-B spoofer and the ghost airplanes’ position

Summary

Introduction

The Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) system is considered to be the backbone of the future air traffic control system [1,2]. More than 80% of commercial aircraft are currently equipped with ADS-B hardware [3]. It is a dependent and cooperative surveillance system in which the aircraft has an ADS-B transponder mounted on-board and continually broadcasts its state vector obtained from the Global. The transponder uses the radar Mode S protocol to broadcast this information through the digital data link on the shared L-band channel. The Mode S protocol foresees 120 μs messages that contain a data block which is 112 bits long (112 μs), and an additional 8 μs preamble for synchronization.

Results

Discussion

Conclusion