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One of the most ubiquitous technologies, the global position system (GPS), that emerged last century threatens a military and civilian operations due to a fatal vulnerability, that is only now getting attention.

A space-based satellite navigation system, GPS provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It provides critical capabilities to military, civil and commercial users around the world.

Developed back in 1973 to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems, GPS became fully operational in 1994. Significantly for Australia, it is maintained by the United States government and is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver. But reliance on GPS is subject to major vulnerabilities recent official studies have shown.

Issued in 2011, the Royal Academy of Engineering report found jamming of GPS based vehicle tracking devices was easy and cheap. They were often deployed hide a car driver’s movements or avoiding road user charging.

Moreover rebroadcasting (‘meaconing’) a GPS signal maliciously, accidentally or to improve reception could cause misreporting of a position. This effectively allowed for spoofing GPS to create a controllable misreporting of position, for example to deceive tracking devices.

In 2009, the UK Ministry of Defence conducted trials of GPS jamming against the THV Galatea, a buoy tender, in an area of sea near South Shields in the north of England. The jamming caused the ship’s systems, which were reliant on GPS, to malfunction alarmingly. During the trial the ship gradually lost position, and the autopilot told the ship to move off course, moreover, there was no indication on the ship that there had been a navigation failure.

GPS – A global single point of failure

This single point of failure can affect both navigational and communications instruments, David Last a consultant on the project told ZDNet UK.

Instruments affected aboard the Galatea included the main electronic chart display. This was linked to the autopilot; the ship’s automatic identification system; voice and data communications; and the helicopter-pad stabilisation system.

The ship’s position silently departed from its true position, and the ship’s autopilot silently began to turn the vessel according to Last. The Galatea was only able to get an accurate position from a ground-based transmitter located some 130 Km away in Anthon, using terrestrial technology known as LOng RAnge Navigation (LORAN) which was not susceptible to cheap GPS jamming devices.

Critical national infrastructure such as stock exchanges could be adversely affected by GPS jamming and spoofing because their datacentres rely on GPS signals to timestamp transactions. Any confusion caused by disruption to such timestamps could provoke a bear run of traders withdrawing from the market effecting a king hit on the national economy.

The prevalence of cheap jamming devices will increase because the signal received at ground level from the GPS satellites is weak. Jamming over a small area is easily achieved.

It took the Federal Aviation Authority over three months to locate jammers upsetting landing planes were in fast moving trucks on the nearby freeway. Dedicated kits known as Radionavigation-Satellite Service (RNSS) jammers are available for purchase over the internet even though they have been banned in Australia since 2004 for just over $AUD30.

In March last year, Professor Andrew Dempster, of the University of NSW School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, issued a warning on GPS jamming. Some of this was unintended.

His research team detected interference in GPS signals caused by a television tower in Sydney’s northern suburbs. The UNSW team are working with the University of Adelaide and private company GPSat Systems on an Australian Research Council-funded project to develop jammer-detection technology.

“Our research will produce a system that can accurately geolocate the position of a jamming signal, and hopefully track a moving vehicle carrying a jammer,” Professor Dempster said.

In Australia, Defence accepts vulnerabilities of GPS, informing ADM, it is “focused on ensuring that the Australian Defence Force is able to conduct operations mindful of GPS degradation or denial”.

But Defence declined to elaborate on any specific strategies or capabilities it was pursuing as these were classified.

Enter Locata


A local company known as Locata is likely to be part of its solution.

David Small and Nunzio Gambale founded Locata in 1997 as a Canberra-based start-up.  As of August 2011, the company has been granted 81 patents based on its revolutionary local positioning technology called LocataNet. This offers a ground-based local positioning system that provides mapping information similar to GPS, but without the satellites, atomic clocks or ground support structure required by traditional GPS systems.

To determine positioning in a LocataNet, LocataLite radio transceivers are deployed across a defined area. These devices function like a grounded version of a GPS satellite constellation, sending out radiolocation signals that Locata receivers use to get a location fix.

A Locata receiver outputs a position solution stream, offering latitude, longitude and altitude, an National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) stream for marine devices in the same way as a traditional GPS receiver.

LocataLites provide all of the Position, Navigation and Time (PNT) functions provided by a GPS satellite constellation, but in a local area, allowing operators to locate, automate and direct objects with centimeter-level accuracy. Locata’s duplication of PNT is made possible by the company’s patented nanosecond-accurate “TimeLoc” synchronisation technology.

In contrast to a GPS signal, attempts to jam a LocataNet are unlikely because they would need so much power to run the jamming that its source could be easily located and taken out based on their signal source.

Locata already holds a multi-year sole-source contract with the US Air Force 746th Test Squadron (746 TS) to deploy a LocataNet and provide positioning information when GPS is jammed across a 6,500 square kilometre area of its White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Earlier this year, Locata’s potential was demonstrated in a civilian maritime scenario when it went head to head to with GPS in a NSW Government’s Sydney Satellites project at Farm Cove. Three runs of maritime vessels in the area generated some 12 minutes of data. These support that Locata offered a high precision alternative to GPS with horizontal positioning within a jaw-dropping 4.4 cm range.

Locata’s technology is already established in mining scenarios where satellites cannot reach at all.

In partnership with Leica Geosystems, Newmont’s Boddington Gold Mine (BGM) in Western Australia use Locata’s technology for locating its mining machines. As pits get deeper and traditional satellite-based GPS coverage becomes unreliable near the mine’s steep walls, LocataNet has become essential.

It is likely to feature in Australian Defence’s alternatives to GPS where navigation may be less trustworthy and operational positioning is vital.

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