PRSAustria

Impacts and Countermeasures of Austrian PRS application scenarios in GNSS denied environments

Aims

In PRSAustria, Galileo PRS application scenarios will be analysed and tested regarding their real threat potential. The benefits but also drawbacks of PRS are examined and the robustness of PRS is demonstrated in contrast to the civilian signals under real conditions. For this purpose, GNSS jammers will be used (either real with the necessary permission or simulated) to evaluate current solution strategies and approaches to mitigate the effect in GNSS receivers. Awareness building will be done by demonstrating and explaining the threat potential and its impacts from different points of view to the relevant authorities, stakeholders, and end-users. Strategies for Austria to take advantage of the benefits and overcome the drawbacks and threats are cooperatively elaborated.

Brief Description

During the exploratory project TAUPAS, possible PRS use cases have been elaborated and discussed together with the Austrian authorities (BMLVS, BKA, BMI) and potential Austrian users. These use cases are an important decision-making aid for the authorities in the decision whether Austria will participate in the Galileo PRS program as a user. The elaborated scenarios are applicable to a wide range, e.g. platform safety, hostage rescue, foreign assignments, safety of persons, safety of critical infrastructure and other future scenarios (e.g. autonomous control, time synchronization or humanitarian aid). The probability and threat of each scenario were highlighted within the TAUPAS project from a theoretical point of view. The analysis of the real consequences and danger though was not yet possible due to restrictions and limited resources. The awareness of the stakeholders for the scenarios was raised during the TAUPAS project, but there is still a large gap between the theoretical considerations of a threat and the insight after a real incidence of such a scenario. Although the awareness is not yet as high as it should be, the decision whether Austria will be a Galileo PRS user or not has to be made early (to arrange the legal and technical requirements, like the establishment of an Austrian PRS authority). Therefore, it is inevitable to make Austria PRS-ready now.

During the envisaged project PRSAustria, the developed scenarios should be concretized and analysed regarding their real threat potential. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the scenarios in detail as well as the usage of PRS regarding the raising of the awareness. This can only be done if the stakeholders are confronted with the real incidents of such scenarios. Therefore, it is planned to analyse the potential of PRS in case of such a scenario during the project and demonstrate at the same time the susceptibility of the civil signals (GPS L1 C/A, Galileo E1B OS, or Galileo CS).

For this task (which is supported by the relevant Austrian authorities – BMVLS as project partner, BMI, BKA and bmvit via letter of support), two scenarios shall be acted out together with BMLVS and BMI (friendly-force-tracking and hostage rescue). During these scenarios, jammer and spoofer will be used (either real with the necessary permission or simulated) to evaluate the impact on the current strategies in these scenarios. In parallel, PRS-like signals will be generated and integrated into the scenarios. With this, it is possible to show the benefit of Galileo PRS under realistic conditions.

Regarding the awareness, it is important to demonstrate and explain the threat potential to the responsible Ministries and other defined Austrian stakeholders in order to cooperatively elaborated strategies to overcome these threats. The, within TAUPAS and PURSIT, established networks to stakeholders and users of Galileo PRS in Austria will be further deepened and extended. In addition, the collaboration and networking of the different stakeholders with each other shall be strengthened by organizing common workshops.