Research Online: A way to authenticate Galileo Open Service

Overview of the main signal design aspects relevant for authentication at the spreading code level. (Image: Authors)

SNAP: An Authentication Concept for the Galileo Open Service

By Beatrice Motella and Davide Margaria, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella
and Matteo Paonni/European Commission
Presented at ION/IEEE/PLANS 2018

The design of a solution for the authentication of both navigation data bits and spreading code chips — Spreading Code and Navigation data-based Authentication Proposal (SNAP) — and suitable for the evolution of the Galileo E1 Open Service (OS) signal is presented in this paper. Though the technique is innovative and able to achieve predefined authentication performance, it exploits the structure of the legacy Galileo signal and the characteristics of the OS Navigation Message Authentication (NMA) that will be transmitted starting in 2018. A detailed overview of the open choices for the design of signal components dedicated to authentication is provided, together with an analysis of signal parameters definition. A possible implementation option of the SNAP solution is also presented.

After investigating the performance of the solution under different families of spoofing attacks, a trade-off analysis addressed to the definition of the solution parameters is presented, followed by a possible implementation of the SNAP concept, referred to as working point.

Available online via www.ion.org/publications/browse.cfm.