Testing Real-Time Anti-Spoofing Algorithms, Results of Intentional Interference Tests at JRC for Airborne Receivers

Adria Rovira-Garcia, Jaume Sanz, Marco Pini, Mario Nicola, Gianluca Marucco, Sophie Damy, Luca Cucchi, Javier Tegedor

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The increasing prevalence of GNSS jamming and spoofing presents a critical safety risk to civil aviation, particularly during sensitive flight phases like landing or take-off. This study addresses this urgent threat by developing and executing a rigorous testing methodology to evaluate the spoofing resilience of a novel GNSS receiver under development within the GAUSSIAN project. The tests are grounded in the spoofing attack categories (S1-S5) outlined in Appendix W of the EUROCAE/RTCA ED259/DO-401 standard, which range from simple meaconing to sophisticated intermediate-level attacks. The experimental campaign was conducted using a Spirent GSS9000 simulator to generate combined genuine and counterfeit RF signals. The performance of the GAUSSIAN receiver was benchmarked against a professional-grade receiver and a certified aviation-grade GPS L1 receiver across five defined spoofing scenarios. The analysis focused on positional accuracy, Carrier-toNoise density (C/No) ratios, and the effectiveness of spoofing flags. Results demonstrate that the GAUSSIAN receiver successfully detected and mitigated all five spoofing attacks, performing on par with the professional-grade receiver. Both devices correctly raised spoofing flags and prevented the output of misleading position solutions when spoofing monitoring was enabled. In contrast, the aviation-grade receiver proved vulnerable, providing false positions without alarms during meaconing (S1) and targeted spoofing (S5) attacks. A key finding is that temporally misaligned spoofing signals (S3) were inherently rejected by all receivers, while temporally aligned threats required active detection algorithms to neutralize. The study concludes that the GAUSSIAN receiver exhibits robust spoofing resilience, a crucial step towards developing certifiable PNT technologies for the future Urban Air Mobility market and enhancing the security of aviation operations against this clear and present danger.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2026 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 26 - 29, 2026 Hyatt Regency Orange County Anaheim, California
Pages:	842 - 853
Cite this article:	Rovira-Garcia, Adria, Sanz, Jaume, Pini, Marco, Nicola, Mario, Marucco, Gianluca, Damy, Sophie, Cucchi, Luca, Tegedor, Javier, "Testing Real-Time Anti-Spoofing Algorithms, Results of Intentional Interference Tests at JRC for Airborne Receivers," Proceedings of the 2026 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Anaheim, California, January 2026, pp. 842-853. https://doi.org/10.33012/2026.20512
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