GPS technology developer oneNav has announced the results of a groundbreaking real-world test proving the resilience of its first-of-its-kind technology to widespread GPS interference. The tests took place in and around Haifa, Israel, and examined the performance of the GPS receivers in leading smartphone and smartwatch brands – the first such study to ever be conducted in an active conflict zone.
For this test, oneNav compared its L5-direct™ GPS receiver to receivers found in iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel smartphones and Garmin watches. While these receivers all experienced navigation failure due to GPS interference, oneNav’s L5-direct™ test solution maintained accurate location fixes despite active jamming and spoofing.
This resilience is due to L5-direct™ being able to directly acquire the most modern band of GPS signals, known as L5, and bypass the outdated L1 GPS signal which was first invented more than 50 years ago. While current commercial GPS receivers in smartphones, car navigation systems, and airplanes are able to process the L5 band, they can only do so in a hybrid system that must first acquire L1. This means that, to use the most modern GPS signal available, a device must rely on L1 signals – the very same signals that are currently being jammed in Israel and elsewhere worldwide.
Given the vital role that GPS plays – not only for smartphones, but also for aviation, emergency response services and military use – relying on the L1 signals in a hybrid GPS system is an enormous national security and public safety risk.
However, L5-band signals are 30x harder to jam and interfere with compared to L1, and they offer superior performance in difficult-to-navigate areas such as urban canyons and tree-covered regions. This new technology has the potential to revolutionize GPS in our most essential devices and across our most critical industries.
“We now have clear, indisputable evidence that L5-direct™ is resilient to widespread GPS jamming and is able to provide precision location in GPS-contested environments,” said oneNav CEO Steve Poizner. “This test is a real-world validation of our first-of-its-kind technology and shows the potential for L5-direct™ to revolutionize how we use GPS for civilian and military purposes in Israel and globally.”
While the field testing took place in Israel, GPS interference is a global security concern due to the increase in attacks on GPS systems worldwide. In Ukraine, Russia is countering American-made smart weapons on the battlefield through GPS-jamming technology and is accused of interfering with GPS navigation systems in more than 46,000 flights across Europe. An April 2024 field study by oneNav confirmed widespread Russian GPS jamming from Finland to Turkey, with the L5-band signal proving immune to Russian L1 jamming attempts.
“As our adversaries’ GPS jamming capabilities become more sophisticated, the need to modernize this crucial technology could not be clearer,” said oneNav Advisory Board Member Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery (Ret.), also a Senior Director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Make no mistake, GPS interference can happen in any war zone and even our domestic critical infrastructures are at risk. As evidenced by oneNav’s groundbreaking field study, the United States has the technology to combat these threats, we just need to implement it.”
oneNav’s IP core is currently available for evaluation and integration by select chip developer partners and its low-SWaP (space, weight and power) chips and modules will soon be available for select partners. L5-direct™ is compatible with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) constellations including GPS, Galileo, BeiDou and more.
Click here to learn more about oneNav's L5-direct GPS receiver.
