Newsletter #2AUGUST 2019

WWW.GNSS-FANTASTIC.EU

The FANTASTIC Project is funded by the European GNSS Agency (GSA) under the European Union’s Fundamental Elements research and development programme

under grant agreement No. GSA/GRANT/01/2016

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Welcomeletter

THE IDEA OF FANTASTIC PROJECT

Dear reader, thank you for your interest in the FANTASTIC project.

The idea of FANTASTIC is based on the key role satellite navigation technology is playing in several high-tech domains that are already impacting on our economies and on our way of living, both in the professional and in the commercial sector. FANTASTIC, acronym for Field Aware Navigation and Timing Authentication Sensor for Timing Infrastructure and Centimeter level positioning, leverages Galileo’s characteristics to bring Global Navigation Satellite System - GNSS applications to the next level. FANTASTIC’s “field aware” antenna technology, combined with a multi-frequency receiver, lets professional GNSS applications work in harsher conditions, where they usually cannot.

In the past year, all the partners worked together towards one goal: to test the FANTASTIC devices in harsh environments to demonstrate their capabilities. For this reason, in this issue of our newsletter you will find an article on our on-the-field tests carried out in Italy. This test campaign was very useful to understand the behavior of the FANTASTIC devices in real conditions, and, as you will see from some photos, we didn’t go halfway.

FANTASTIC is ending in August 2019, after 30 months of challenging tests and experiments, conducted by the project partners across Europe. The project was presented to the public and to the press in two final events that took place in Italy at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra and at the University of Turin campus in Grugliasco, near Torino.

In this final issue, you will also find the links to our White Paper and to the final video of our project.

CONTACTS US14

13 PARTNERS

12 FANTASTIC WHITE PAPER

NEWS AND EVENTS

BEST PRESENTATION AWARD AT ION GNSS+ 2018!

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2019: A YEAR OF INTENSE TESTING!07

GSA PUBLISHED A REPORT ON PNT IN THE AGRI-SECTOR

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FANTASTIC FINAL WORKSHOPS10

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Best presentation award at ION GNSS+ 2018!

The paper dedicated to the new technique that was developed as part of the FANTASTIC project in order to address spoofing attacks based on a perfect or nearly-perfect signal replica won the best presentation award at the ION GNSS+ 2018 in Miami, USA. The paper was presented in the F2 Session – GNSS Signal Processing in Degraded Environments 2. During the presentation, the paper received a lot of interest. The debate between ION attendees and the authors was intense.

ION GNSS+ is considered the world’s largest technical meeting and showcase of GNSS technology, products and services. The conference brings together international leaders in GNSS and related positioning, navigation and timing fields to present new research, introduce new technologies, discuss current policy, demonstrate products and exchange ideas.

TITLEAuthentication by Polarization: A Powerful Anti-Spoofing Method

AUTHORSWim De Wilde, Bruno Bougard, Jean-Marie Sleewaegen, Gert Cuypers, Septentrio, Belgium; Alexander Popugaev, Markus Landmann, Christopher Schirmer, Fraunhofer IIS, Germany; Daniel Egea Roca, José A. López-Salcedo, Gonzalo Seco Granados, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.

ABSTRACTGlobal Navigation Satellite Systems have become a ubiquitous tool for our modern society for vital tasks such as transportation, civil engineering or precision agriculture. This

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breath has reached the realm of safety-critical applications as time management of critical infrastructures or autonomous vehicles, in which GNSS is an essential tool nowadays. In this side, GNSS is used for synchronization of communication networks and power-plants, which is a key enabler for the inception of smart cities. Nevertheless, GNSS receivers are vulnerable to radio-frequency interference. In particular, spoofing is becoming one of the main concerns for the GNSS community. The main reason is that a spoofing threat can inject misleading information into these vital systems, potentially with catastrophic consequences.

These types of threats are increasingly becoming a worldwide concern, particularly due to the fact that some recent incidents are being speculated to have been caused by spoofing attacks [1,2]. Moreover, with the new trend of safety-critical applications coming up, the motivation of spoofers is increasing, too. From an implementation point of view, spoofing can be done in a large variety of ways, ranging from simplistic ones to sophisticated ones [3].

The formers are expected to become a real threat in the coming years thanks to the very affordable software defined radios (SDR) that entered the market the last few years. These SDRs can be configured to forge GPS signals using open source software. However, the forged signal of this class of spoofers has many artefacts, which can be exploited to easily detect the spoofing attack [4].

Notwithstanding, this doesn’t hold for a reradiation attack where, instead of generating the signal, the spoofer captures the RF signal at one spot and re-transmits the very same signal with full level of detail. Most SDRs can be set-up to record and reradiate the signal with very significant changes in timing or position. This is hard to detect, particularly if the genuine signal has been blocked or jammed. Another class of attacks uses higher-end simulation equipment, which can simulate the GNSS signal with great level of detail. This enables an attack, in which the spoofer gradually takes control of the signal and pulls away the timing provided by a GPS receiver from the actual timing. This type of attack was demonstrated in [5], in which an affordable multi-frequency simulator was configured to spoof the timing reference of a power plant.

A new technique was developed as part of the FANTASTIC

project (Field Aware Navigation and Timing Authentication Sensor and Timing Infrastructure and Centimeter level positioning) in order to address spoofing attacks based on a perfect or nearly-perfect signal replica. The technique exploits the polarization of the GNSS signals. GNSS signals are broadcasted with a right-hand-circular polarization (RHCP), but the perceived polarization at receiver level will be elliptic and different for each satellite, because of reflections and antenna non-idealities. In case of a spoofing attack, the spoofed satellite signals will all have the same polarization. The idea is to exploit this property to detect and reject the spoofing signals.

A dual-polar antenna was developed to validate this concept. This E1/L2/E5/E6 antenna has one output which responds to the right-hand circularly polarized field component like any GNSS antenna, and another output reacting on the opposite polarization (left-hand circular polarization, LHCP).

The antenna was optimized for polarization purity, avoiding antenna-induced spill-over from one polarization into the other. The paper will present the radiation patterns which could be achieved in this way.

The two outputs of the antenna connect to the inputs of a dual-antenna receiver, which is normally used for 2D attitude applications. The software of the receiver was modified to capture the correlations from the LHCP input simultaneously with the RHCP correlations, using the stronger RHCP signal to feedback the tracking loops. This provides a permanent monitoring of the LHCP signal and hence polarization, even under very low C/No conditions.

This set-up was used to collect data in a special anechoic chamber from the Fraunhofer institute, which can simulate a spoofing attack in the spatial and polarization domain. This anechoic chamber uses a tailored constellation simulator, which outputs digital waveforms for each satellite individually. These signals are then provided to a hemispherical antenna array. This array synthesizes an electromagnetic wave which accurately emulates the spatial direction and polarization of the signal. The simulator was configured to generate “genuine” satellites at different azimuth and elevation angles next to a spoofing signal in a fixed direction. The primary purpose was to try to hijack the PPS output of the receiver.

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The paper reports on experiments done with linearly and circularly polarized spoofing antennas.The recorded data was used to develop a reliable anti-spoofing algorithm, providing a solid spoofing flag to inform the user on the attack. The focus is to avoid false alarms, which would let the user take unnecessary measures and jeopardize normal operation of the system. For this, the receiver system was used to record polarization measurements in various outdoor environments, in absence of a spoofer. These included rural environments, urban canyons as well as an extended logging under tree canopy. These extensive data recordings were used to obtain an accurate statistical model of authentic GNSS signal polarization. This model was used to design a simple but reliable detector, which maximizes the probability to detect the spoofer while ensuring a very low probability of false alarm.

[1]: Daniel Shepard, Jahshan A. Bhatti, Todd E. Humphreys, “Drone hack: Spoofing attack demonstration on a civilian unmanned aerial vehicle”, GPS World, Vol. 1, nº Dec., 2011.

[2]: CNN, “Getting lost near the Kremlin? Russia could be GPS spoofing”, CNN tech, Retrieved from: http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/02/technology/kremlin-gps-signals/index.html, Accesed: 18-6-2017, 2016.

[3]: Todd E. Humphreys, Brent M. Ledvina, Mark L. Psiaki, Brady W. Hanlon, Paul M. Kintner, “Assessing the spoofing threat: Development of a portable GPS civilian spoofer”, Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION), pp. 2314-2325, 2008.

[4]: De Wilde, Wim et al, “Spoofing Threats: Reality Check, Impact and Cure,” Proceedings of the 30th International Technical Meeting of The Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2017), Portland, Oregon, September 2017, pp. 1289-1327.

[5]: lie, Iurie et al, “Spoofing of Electrical Power Grid: It’s Easier Than You Think,” Proceedings of the 30th International Technical Meeting of The Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2017), Portland, Oregon, September 2017, pp. 1383-1408.

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GSA published a report on PNT in the agri-sector

The European GNSS Agency – GSA is promoting the use of GNSS technologies in Europe in several fields: one of the most interesting one is the agri-sector. Recently, GSA presented a report on user needs and requirements in the agriculture sector on position, navigation and timing (PNT).

Thanks to the emerging ICT and digital technologies, the modern agriculture is evolving and is becoming more and more efficient. Saving costs and reducing the environmental impact are the key aspects of this evolution, which is leading to a final outcome: Smart Farming. Smart Farming is a combination of technologies to produce more and better food while optimizing the agriculture processes. Among these technologies, the precise positioning provided by GNSS is of the utmost importance. In fact, driverless agricultural vehicles will heavily exploit GNSS signals to perform autonomous tasks. This new concept of agriculture represents a frontier for the European space policy and for the European industries and GNSS companies. The European GNSS Agency – GSA is at the forefront in promoting the use of Galileo and the other European GNSS technologies for Precision Agriculture – PA applications.

The Report on Agriculture User Needs and Requirements is one of the most relevant outcomes of the first EGNSS User Consultation Platform. As explained by GSA, the report includes an analysis of current and potential future market trends in the agriculture sector. It also analyses user requirements for applications in Precision Agriculture and agri-logistics and examines performance requirements by application.

The GSA news is available here.

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2019: a year of intense testing!

The first six months of 2019 represented a great challenge for the whole FANTASTIC consortium. In particular, the Italian team from LINKS Foundation carried out a test campaign for the FANTASTIC use case scenario II, the “machine control” domain, e.g. construction machines, precise agriculture and robotics.

The goal of the project in this use case was to test the developed FANTASTIC system and to demonstrate its capability to provide an accurate position based on carrier phase measurements in environments presenting increasing levels of impairments (multipath, shadowing, interference….). All the tests were realized in collaboration with the Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences of the University of Turin – DISAFA. All the data were also post-processed by Septentrio in Belgium.

The team is working on the performance assessment of the FANTASTIC devices, evaluating the Cumulative Distribution Function of the horizontal positioning error, which offers a clear and comprehensive view of the positioning performances. Particular attention is also devoted to the attitude estimation, although this assessment is quite challenging, due to the target performance of the devices under tests that is on the order of less than 1 degree. The experimental test set up has been refined few times to guarantee a fair assessment.

New set of data collections with the FANTASTIC receiver and antennas were collected. The following video shows the typical data collection session realized in collaboration with DISAFA at their premises in Grugliasco, near Turin.

Video: link

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JANUARY

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February was also dedicated to the system calibration. The FANTASTIC team performed accurate measurements in order to determine the mutual orientation of the elements: the FANTASTIC antennas and the NovAtel SPAN unit. This re-calibration followed the detection of some slight misalignments from the post processing of the data collected in January.

The team started to investigate how the FANTASTIC receivers and antenna could work in a very harsh environment: under a greenhouse. It was interesting to observe the behavior of high end receivers in a greenhouse, where the glass and metal frame could affect the carrier phase measurements. In this case, the objective of our new tests was to quantify this impact.

In the following video from our Twitter account, @GNSSFantastic, Gianluca Marucco from LINKS Foundation presents the new setup of our electric kart used to test the receivers and the antennas.

In May, the FANTASTIC team started preparing the setup for a test in the vineyards, useful for a part of the final tests of the project. Such tests aimed at comparing the performances of FANTASTIC receivers and antenna with some benchmark receivers in RTK mode. In order to carry on the tests, we needed to check if a reliable provision of GNSS differential corrections was possible in this specific area. Therefore, we placed a GNSS base station in a location with an excellent view of the sky: the top of a hill. After that, we walked downhill in the vineyard with a PC in order to log corrections from the base station. Both the base station and the PC were connected to the cellular network and the corrections were dispatched and received through it. Despite the field strength was not very high, we did not experience any correction loss.

Our electric kart in front of the greenhouse used for the tests

march

may

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In the first week of June 2019, the FANTASTIC team carried on a new and very intense test campaign in three different locations, each one unique for different reasons but all of them characterized by the presence of foliage.

1 – A vineyard on a hill near Alba, in the Langhe area, where the electric cart used for our tests was at the limit of its traction capability. It’s important to underline that, among the benefits of the FANTASTIC device, there is the attitude computation based on both dual antenna and integrated inertial measurement unit. For this reason, we chose a vineyard placed on a particularly steep hill. The precise measurement of the roll and pitch is one of the requirements for the use of vehicles in these environments.

2 – An apple field characterized by the height of the trees and the anti-hail nets.

3 – A kiwi field, where the foliage is very dense and sometimes it can cover the sky view.

A short video dedicated to this batch of experiments: link.

JUNE

1 - Test on a vineyard on a hill near Alba

2 - Test on an apple field

3 - Test on a kiwi field

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FANTASTIC Final workshops

On June 24th and 25th, the FANTASTIC team met GNSS researchers and stakeholders for the project final workshop.

The workshop was split in two to highlight the scientific collaborations carried on with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences of the University of Turin.

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The first day was hosted in the JRC facilities in Ispra, Italy. The event focused on spoofing: the hijacking of the positioning output of a navigation device by injecting a false signal into the antenna. The consortium discussed spoofing threats and presented two anti-spoofing techniques developed in the FANTASTIC program, one of which leveraging an innovative features which will be introduced in the GALILEO constellation shortly.

The second day of the FANTASTIC final event took place at the Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences - DISAFA of the University of Turin, in the Grugliasco campus near Torino, Italy. This second event focused on precision agriculture and machine control. Within FANTASTIC, several technologies were developed to increase the robustness of the positioning and attitude solution. The prototype was validated on an electrical tractor in challenging agricultural environments.

The attendees to the second day at the University of Turin campus were also able to see the electric cart used for the test in vineyards, orchards and greenhouses aside of other equipment realized by the DISAFA department.

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In this White Paper about FANTASTIC, our team presents the project, its use cases, and the main achievements.

The White Paper is available on the FANTASTIC website at the following page: http://gnss-fantastic.eu/newsletter

FANTASTICwhite paper

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Top-tier partnersTop-tier European players bringing GNSS know-how, experience and market access all together.

Septentrio designs, manufactures and sells highly accurate GPS/GNSS receivers, for demanding applications requiring

accuracies in the decimeter or centimeter range, even under difficult conditions.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is the leading organization for applied research in Europe. Its research activities are conducted by 72 institutes and research units at locations

throughout Germany. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft employs a staff of 25,000, who work with an annual research budget totaling more than 2.3 billion euros.

GMV is a privately owned technological business group with an international presence. GMV offers its solutions, services and products in very diverse sectors: Aeronautics, Banking and Finances, Space,

Defense, Health, Cybersecurity, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Automotive, Telecommunications, and Information Technology for Public Administration and large corporations.

LINKS Foundation, a central node of the Turin research and innovation ecosystem, operates in a consolidated international network and contributes to technological and socio-economic progress through cutting edge applied research projects. Partner of excellence for public and private

organizations who want to promote projects of technological innovation and territorial development, LINKS stands out for the high competence and multidisciplinarity of human capital, the real beating heart of the Foundation.

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is known for its excellence in research and quality in teaching, and is a

reference centre in Europe.

COORDINATOR

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MATTEO VANNUCCHIWP Communication Responsable Partner

This newsletter is edited by LINKS Foundation. For more information, please contact:

P. +39 011.276444