Robust solutions for future safety-critical navigation applications in aviation
Reliable navigation is an essential prerequisite for all forms of air transport. This already applies to traditional aviation and is becoming ever more crucial with the development towards increasing automation, autonomy and the introduction of RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System). This is all the more true in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles of all sizes and types. Reliable navigation is fundamentally being pursued through multi-sensor approaches. However, satellite navigation is already a central element of this, as it is the only system that combines high accuracy, reliability, absolute positioning and global availability. Numerous recent attacks in cyberspace, which have also been reported in the press, have shown that satellite navigation can be critically compromised by jamming and spoofing – a potential threat to the safety of air navigation and air transport.
To safeguard such systems, the DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation has developed interference-proof and deception-proof satellite navigation receivers and the corresponding antennas. These in turn are used, among other things, to develop satellite navigation-based cyber-secure landing systems. The performance and interference immunity of such ground-based augmentation systems (GBAS) were recently validated in flight tests. The flight tests with jamming and deceptive signals were the first of their kind in German airspace. The technologies and procedures developed ultimately serve to ensure the safety of both conventional aviation and the safe autonomous operation of unmanned aerial vehicles in the field of urban air mobility (UAM). As a supplement and replacement for satellite-based positioning, navigation and timing systems (PNT), the institute is also developing assured positioning navigation and timing systems (APNT), which are intended to compensate for a complete failure of satellite navigation as a backup system.
Links:
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Institute of Communications and Navigation
E-Mail contact-dlr@DLR.de
