Application of GPS Jammer in Medium-sized City
The United States is still vulnerable to GPS interference or deception.
A United States Department of Homeland Security Officer in Tenn. According to a Global Positioning System conference in Nashville, a well-placed GPS jammer or spoofer can jam signals throughout the US.
Meanwhile, America.S. still “lacks the capability to rapidly detect and geo-locate jamming or spoofing of GPS services,” DHS program manager John Merrill told the annual meeting of the Civil Global Positioning System Service Interface Committee, a global forum that fosters interaction between the U.Us and Global GPS Users. The United States develops and operates GPS.
Merrill did not define the size of a region a GPS jammers could knock out, but Jules McNeff, who spent 20 years in the Air Force working on GPS and is now vice president for strategies and programs at Overlook Systems Technologies Inc. A GPS engineering company in Vienna, Virginia. It is estimated that a one-watt GPS jammer could cover a medium-sized city.
Logan Scott, president of a company with GPS expertise called LS Consulting, said in a May webinar run by Inside GNSS that a GPS jammer with one-tenth of a watt of transmit power has a range of 9.4 miles, a one-watt jammer, 29.8 miles, and a fen watt jammer, 94.2 miles. Inside GNSS is a magazine about GPS and other satellite navigation systems operated by China, the European Union, and Russia, collectively referred to as global navigation satellite systems.
The power-level consumer jammers can be purchased on the Internet from Chinese manufacturers for as little as $40.
DHS and the Defense Department have worked to develop a jammer location system that picks up and feeds jammer signals to a master station run by the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency since 2010, but to date the only feeds it receives are from sensors located at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Merrill said at the meeting.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission spent two years - from March 2009 to April 2011 - locating a GPS jammer used on the New Jersey Turnpike. The jammer interferes with an FAA system, which provides enhanced navigation signals for aircraft near the airport for accurate approach, departure procedures, and terminal area operations.
The FAA plans to place heavy reliance on GPS between now and 2030, with the satellite system as the core of its Next Generation Air Transportation System and plans to decommission its ground-based VHF omnidirectional radio or VOR, by then.
Jammers can affect GPS and other GNSS systems.In September 2012, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States established a GNSS Intentional Jamming and Deception Research Group to identify technical, political, legal, and operational modalities to mitigate the effects of GPS fraud and jamming.
Deborah Lawrence (Deborah Lawrence), the FAA's navigation project manager, said at the meeting that the team would provide the agency with "concrete and practical recommendations" on how to deal with fraud and interference by the end of September.