GNSS Jamming: How to Test the Risks to Safety-critical and Liability-critical Systems

As industries rely more heavily on GNSS signals for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), radio frequency (RF) interference from signal jamming is a growing threat.Whether intentional or unintentional, jamming can have a significant impact on the performance of GNSS receivers including those used for safety-critical and liability-critical operations.Developers and integrators of GNSS receivers must-fully understand the risks presented by jamming, and design mitigation measures that ensure receivers and their users are adequately protected.

This paper is written for designers and developers of GNSS chipsets and modules, as well as organisations selecting or integrating a GNSS receiver for a safety-critical or liability-critical system. It reviews the growing threat from GNSS signal jamming, and the unpredictable effects it can have on GNSS receivers.It sets out the methods by which receivers can be thoroughly tested to understand how they behave indifferent jamming scenarios, and provides an example test description from Spirent’s library of interference test packs.