Combating Single-Frequency Jamming through a Multi-Frequency, Multi-Constellation Software Receiver: A Case Study for Maritime Navigation in the Gulf of Finland

Abstract

Today, a substantial portion of global trade is carried by sea. Consequently, the reliance on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based navigation in the oceans and inland waterways has been rapidly growing. GNSS is vulnerable to various radio frequency interference. The objective of this research is to propose a resilient Multi-Frequency, Multi-Constellation (MFMC) receiver in the context of maritime navigation to identify any GNSS signal jamming incident and switch to a jamming-free signal immediately. With that goal in mind, the authors implemented a jamming event detector that can identify the start, end, and total duration of the detected jamming event on any of the impacted GNSS signal(s). By utilizing a jamming event detector, the proposed resilient MFMC receiver indeed provides a seamless positioning solution in the event of single-frequency jamming on either the lower or upper L-band. In addition, this manuscript also contains positioning performance analysis of GPS-L5-only, Galileo-E5a-only, and Galileo-E5b-only signals and their multi-GNSS combinations in a maritime operational environment in the Gulf of Finland. The positioning performance of lower L-band GNSS signals in a maritime environment has not been thoroughly investigated as per the authors’ knowledge.