Avionics-based GNSS integrity augmentation performance in a jamming environment

Intentional and unintentional radiofrequency interference (i.e., jamming) can result in degraded navigation accuracy or complete loss of the GNSS signal tracking. Jammers can be classified into three broad categories: Narrowband Jammers (NBJ), Spread Spectrum Jammers (SSJ) and Wideband Gaussian Jammers (WGJ). In recent years, a number of effective jamming detection and anti-jamming (filtering and suppression) techniques have been developed for military GNSS applications and some of them are envisaged to be used for civil purposes (e.g., terrorist attacks). The synergies between these jamming detection techniques and our newly developed Avionics-Based Integrity Augmentation (ABIA) system are investigated in this paper. In particular, GNSS vulnerability to NBJ, SSJ and WGJ types of jamming is analytically described in terms of Jamming to Signal (J/S) tracking thresholds and the models for calculating the minimum acceptable aircraft-to-jammer ranges are presented. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ABIA architecture is capable of performing jamming detection and avoidance when GNSS is used as the primary source of navigation data.