Leveraging Traditional GNSS Time Servers for Resiliency and Interoperability in Broadcast Positioning Systems (BPS)
Originally Aired - Sunday, April 14 | 2:10 PM - 2:30 PM PT
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Alternative Positioning Navigation and Timing (APNT) technologies are becoming increasingly important as GNSS systems face vulnerabilities such as jamming, spoofing, and signal degradation. APNT systems can strengthen, augment, and replace GNSS systems when needed. The National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018 called for the development of an APNT capability to ensure the availability of uncorrupted and non-degraded timing signals for military and civilian users in the event that GPS timing signals are corrupted, degraded, unreliable or otherwise unavailable. APNT systems can also provide a backup for GPS timing components to ensure the reliable and efficient functioning of critical infrastructure. The transition from GNSS-provided PNT services to an alternate means of achieving PNT must ensure safety and security, preclude significant loss of economic benefits, and require little change in the way operations are carried out. It is essential to develop robust APNT solutions through the integration of an APNT capability. The combination of multiple timing sources with internal precision timekeeping via TCXO, OCXO or Rb oscillator, the modularity in terms of power supply and optional configurations allow these devices to be used both in the master and follower stations, in third locations which provide traceable timing or even at the user side if ATSC 3.0 becomes available as an additional source for those units. Resilient Timing depends on securing the time reference acquisition and timescale keeping, in the face of GNSS interference. Traditional GNSS time servers and distribution units offer a number of solutions to address GNSS threats which will complement and help on the monitoring of the Broadcast Positioning Systems when operational. With a layered-defense approach, each protective layer increases the sophistication required to compromise, minimizing chances for successful attack. The combination of Interference Detection Software, allowing jamming and spoofing detection, redundant time sources, clock ensemblement and high-performance internal oscillators will vastly mitigate the threat of a GNSS black-swan event. Additionally, traditional GNSS time servers are developed with a strong focus on security, combining cybersecurity best practices, including VLAN support account/access management, authentication, encryption, security event logs, network features disabling, as well as regular, secured firmware updates to keep pace with the latest vulnerabilities and protocol improvements. The strong and scalable networking capabilities based on standard protocols like NTP or PTP thanks to higher embedded processing power will allow to use the different stations as central locations for regional network-based synchronization. This eases the adoptability of this service, scaling the number of potential users and adding timing redundancy in the network segment. In summary, resilient time and frequency synchronization GNSS platforms that provide high bandwidth NTP and IEEE1588 (PTP), support multi-GNSS synchronization (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS) with GPS jamming and spoofing detection option, and are designed with resiliency, redundancy and cybersecurity in mind are a potential candidate to complement Broadcast Positioning Systems and minimize the development stage for this technology.
Time and frequency synchronization platforms provide resilient timing for evolving requirements. Traditional GNSS time servers support multi-GNSS synchronization (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS), GPS jamming and spoofing detection options, a wide variety of available input/output signals and high bandwidth NTP and IEEE1588 (PTP) Master/Slave over Ethernet.These features can be combined with Inter-Tower Synchronization in Broadcast Positioning Systems for resilient operation, interoperability with existing systems and for time measurement and accuracy monitoring while minimizing the time to market for deploying such systems.
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