by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 23, 2024
oneNav, a GPS technology developer, has announced successful real-world tests demonstrating the robustness of its unique technology against extensive GPS interference.
Conducted in and around Haifa, Israel, these tests evaluated the performance of GPS receivers in leading smartphone and smartwatch brands. This study is notable as it is the first conducted in an active conflict zone.
In the tests, oneNav's L5-direct GPS receiver was compared to those in iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel smartphones, and Garmin watches. While traditional receivers failed due to GPS interference, oneNav's L5-direct maintained accurate location data despite active jamming and spoofing.
The L5-direct technology's resilience comes from its ability to directly acquire the modern L5 GPS signal, bypassing the older L1 signal that has been in use for over 50 years. Although current commercial GPS receivers can process the L5 band, they rely on acquiring the L1 signal first, making them vulnerable to jamming. This dependency on L1 signals poses significant risks to national security and public safety, as these signals are currently being jammed in Israel and other regions worldwide.
L5-band signals are 30 times harder to jam compared to L1 and provide superior performance in challenging environments such as urban areas and forested regions. This advancement in GPS technology could significantly impact essential devices and critical industries.
"We now have clear, indisputable evidence that L5-direct is resilient to widespread GPS jamming and is able to provide precision location in GPS-contested environments," stated oneNav CEO Steve Poizner. "This test is a real-world validation of our first-of-its-kind technology and shows the potential for L5-direct to revolutionize how we use GPS for civilian and military purposes in Israel and globally."
GPS interference is a global security issue, with increasing incidents of attacks on GPS systems worldwide. For instance, in Ukraine, Russia is using GPS-jamming technology against American-made smart weapons and has been accused of interfering with the navigation systems of over 46,000 flights across Europe. An April 2024 study by oneNav confirmed extensive Russian GPS jamming from Finland to Turkey, with the L5-band signal proving resistant to these jamming efforts.
"As our adversaries' GPS jamming capabilities become more sophisticated, the need to modernize this crucial technology could not be clearer," commented oneNav Advisory Board Member Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery (Ret.), also a Senior Director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Make no mistake, GPS interference can happen in any war zone and even our domestic critical infrastructures are at risk. As evidenced by oneNav's groundbreaking field study, the United States has the technology to combat these threats, we just need to implement it."
oneNav's IP core is currently available for evaluation and integration by select chip developer partners. Its low-SWaP (space, weight, and power) chips and modules will soon be available for select partners. L5-direct is compatible with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) including GPS, Galileo, BeiDou, and more.
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