Authentication of satellite navigation signals by wiretap coding and artificial noise

Francesco Formaggio,Stefano Tomasin

doi:10.1186/s13638-019-1413-5

Francesco Formaggio, Stefano Tomasin

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-019-1413-5

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Abstract

In order to combat the spoofing of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals, we propose a novel signal authentication method based on information-theoretic security. In particular, the satellite superimposes to the navigation signal an authentication signal containing a secret authentication message corrupted by artificial noise (AN). We impose the following properties: Authentication and navigation signals are synchronous,Authentication and navigation signals are orthogonal andThe secret message is undecodable by the attacker due to the AN.The legitimate receiver synchronizes with the navigation signal and stores the samples of the authentication signal with the same synchronization. After the transmission of the authentication signal, through a separate public asynchronous ground channel (e.g., a secure Internet connection) additional information is made public allowing the receiver to Decode the authentication message, thus overcoming the effects of AN, andVerify the authentication message.We assess the performance of the proposed scheme by the analysis of both the secrecy capacity of the authentication message and the attack success probability under various attack scenarios.

Highlights

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) offer positioning and timing services for an increasing variety of applications
We focus on the spoofing attack, where an attacker (AT) transmits a signal with the purpose of inducing a false specific location estimate to the victim receiver (VR)
In [17], we proposed to superimpose an artificial noise (AN)-corrupted authentication message to the navigation signal, and physical layer authentication (PLA) extends it by including advanced coding and signaling, and analyzing the solution within the framework of wiretap coding

Summary

Introduction

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) offer positioning and timing services for an increasing variety of applications (e.g., car and ship navigation, and synchronization of electrical grid stations). We focus on the spoofing attack, where an attacker (AT) transmits a signal with the purpose of inducing a false specific location estimate to the victim receiver (VR). This attack is active as it requires a transmission by the spoofer. Positioning is typically obtained by measuring the time of arrival of pilot signals known at the receiver. The AT generates and transmits the pilots with proper delays (with respect to other original or spoofed satellite signals) in order to induce the desired position estimation.

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Results

Conclusion