Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) technology developer oneNav has announced the launch of L5-direct, a new GNSS product category capable of directly acquiring and tracking L5-band signals. The launch comes as adversaries such as Russia are interfering with GPS technology throughout Europe, as Russian forces have been successful in using GPS blackout technology to thwart American-made drones on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Additionally, in March 2024, more than 1,600 civilian aircraft were impacted by a mysterious GPS interference in Eastern Europe – a region where Russia has a long history of jamming civilian signals.
While attacks are occurring more frequently, advances in technology have the potential to make GNSS receivers more resilient to manipulation and interference. Advanced L5-band signals represent a significant step forward as these signals are 6-7x more resilient to jamming and spoofing attacks than obsolete L1 C/A signals1, which were first invented more than 50 years ago.
While current GNSS receivers must first acquire L1 before acquiring L5, oneNav developed a new, different hardware architecture, a GNSS Application-Specific Array Processor (ASAP), that enables direct acquisition and tracking of L5-band signals.
An April 2024 field study confirms the resilience of L5-band GPS signals to jamming attempts. For this study, conducted in Eastern Europe in proximity to the Ukrainian front, oneNav researchers compared the performance of L1 and L5 signals in areas with frequent GPS interference. While researchers observed widespread jamming of L1 signals across the region, from Finland to Turkey, signals that directly acquired the L5 band proved immune to attempts at interference.
“Advances in GNSS technology give us the opportunity to better protect our economy, our critical industries, our military, and our E9-1-1 services from bad actors looking to exploit outdated L1 technology,” said oneNav CEO Steve Poizner. “In addition to providing greater accuracy, L5-band signals are more resilient to jamming and interference by design. Unlike existing GNSS receivers that must first acquire old L1 signals before benefitting from advanced L5-band signals, oneNav’s L5-direct acquires these modern signals without using any L1 – a game-changer for the GNSS industry.”
In addition to offering superior performance, L5-direct has a significantly smaller interference radius when encountering future L1/L2/L5 jamming transmissions. It also simplifies GNSS receiver design and reduces cost by eliminating the need for two antennas and two RF receiver chains.
oneNav’s silicon-proven technology is currently available for evaluation and integration by chip developer partners.
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