Tracing a powerful GNSS interference source over Europe

NKosmatos

TLDR (conclusion from the paper): "By a combination of these techniques the satellite Cosmos 2546 (NORAD ID 45608) was identified with high confidence as one source of the interference. Further analysis pointed to the Russian Edinaya Kosmicheskaya Sistema, an early warning constellation to which Cosmos 2546 belongs, as collectively responsible for the wide-area transient interference causing GNSS degradation across Europe since 2019."

yladiz

Related Veritasium video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz23G_UXCGA

uijl

Interesting to see that they are able to identify the specific satellite. I wonder if we can do something now that we know the source. Working on construction projects on the Romanian coastline (just South of Ukraine) and on the Polish continental waters (just West of Kaliningrad) we experienced jamming on a daily basis.

mattlondon

tl;dr - it was Russian satellites

dwa3592

Hmm - the timing is uncanny that only 2 days ago I started building a dead reckoning system.

DivingForGold

You can likely bet that Space X with their thousands of sats deployed in space already has among them a few hundred stealth US military sats strategically placed and ready for the command to deal with the few Russky sats causing these problems ... think our Space Force.

Coala15

Being engaged to warfare with Russia and being jammed in response. So weird.

moffkalast

There's a live map too: https://gpsjam.org

f137

I do not see any discussion of the power required for such wide-area jamming. Even as the useful GPS signal is quite weak at the ground level, this satellite would require power in kW range, right?

avazhi

It's been known that Russia does GPS interference near their Western border and the Baltic down to Ukraine for several years now. It's something airline pilots prepare for now, and expect. Not sure why this is being couched as novel or surprising.

ThePowerOfFuet

Saved you a click: >This paper analyzes and identifies a space-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference source that has caused scores of powerful transient wide-area interference events over continental Europe, Greenland, and Canada since 2019. While terrestrial or near-terrestrial sources are primarily responsible for the recent uptick in GNSS interference worldwide, space-based interferers are of special concern given their potential for vast geographic reach and their portent of a qualitative escalation in GNSS interference. Based on data collected between 2019 and 2026 from a network of terrestrial GNSS reference stations, this paper (1) develops a received-power-based detection framework; (2) details the spatial, temporal, and spectral patterns of wide-area interference events caused by the source; (3) presents and analyzes identification techniques that blend received-power and time-difference-of-arrival measurements; and (4) applies these techniques to confidently identify the GNSS interference source as a constellation of Russian early warning satellites in Molniya ("lightning") orbits.

DumpoLumbo

I wonder why they call this specific discovery “jamming”. What they found is a relatively rare burst transmissions over roughly 5MHz of spectrum of something looking like a 12ms cyclic prefix with spacing related to 150 seconds multiplies. I would suspect it is some sort of sync or data close to L1 GPS frequencies, that as a side effect causing lower CNR for the GPS receivers. Btw it is only 10dB, which also I can’t really call “jamming”. Overall it seems to be an overfitting the observation to the wider intent of a malicious actor.

spwa4

TLDR: Russia is jamming GPS and GNSS over Europe, purposefully, using a constellation of military satellites, part of the Russian nuclear program. Theory is that Russia has been constantly practicing to totally disrupt GPS and GNSS (and the Chinese system) across all of Europe since 2014. Practicing to deploy electronic warfare not across a warzone or even a country but an entire continent.

ck2

glad it's getting more coverage https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48309667

RealityVoid

Mildly interesting, and highly likely related. A cluster of 5(?) Ukrainian marine drones wound up today outside and around of Constanta off the coast of Romania with one detonating in the port and the rest detonating... somewhere around. Que here noisy exposion in port: https://youtu.be/Y8kdneBU_3Q?si=cr07TeMnxJTG-3TM&t=17 No significant damage. The Ukrainans apparently lost control of the drones and they wound up there. My pet theory is that Russian EW jammed the control signals and guided the GPS jamming walking them to Constanta. I'll admit, if it was intentional (it seems so) it's pretty damn' impressive work from Russian EW.

atomicbeanie

Comm signal in band with GPS? Control for a GPS software supply chain attack?

VerifiedReports

The disturbing thing is that anyone was surprised by this. GPS is very fragile. This made news in the U.S. a few years ago because Ajit Pai had the brilliant idea to allow so-called "5G" telecom service on frequencies too close to those of GPS. I don't think this case is resolved yet: https://physicstoday.aip.org/news/new-5g-exemption-may-jam-g...