Jammertest pumps up the jam in Norway

We have come to trust maps without question. But maps can lie when accidental or deliberate interference prevents a receiver from picking up reliable satellite signals.  

There are several types of intentional interference:  

• Jamming occurs when a powerful signal floods a receiver, drowning out the real satellite signal. The receiver can no longer calculate a position, so the blue dot on the map turns grey and disappears. 
• With spoofing, the blue dot is still there, but it is in the wrong place. False signals trick the receiver into calculating an incorrect location. 
• In a meaconing attack, signals from real satellites are captured and rebroadcast to a nearby location. The time or place shown by the receiver are wrong.

At Jammertest, simple receivers are constantly fooled: the blue dot on a maps app suddenly disappears, only to materialise in the middle of a lake or out at sea. A sports app tracks endless circles at impossible walking speeds. Smart watches even appear to travel in time.

But satellite navigation is not only about finding your way to the bus stop or monitoring your marathon training. The same technology underpins critical infrastructure and essential services for both civil and governmental users, such as aviation, financial systems, power grids and emergency assistance, where losing a reliable signal can have serious consequences far beyond a misplaced blue dot. 

So participants from institutions and industry take their innovative technologies to Jammertest to find out what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to protecting receivers against these attacks.  

The European Space Agency (ESA) has been a regular participant since 2023. As the architect of Europe’s satellite navigation systems, ESA continuously works on strengthening their resilience. “Jammertest has become a fundamental complement to our testing activities at ESTEC and in the field. It allows us to take a version of our lab on wheels and test innovations in a real-world environment, under conditions that are impossible to fully replicate in testing facilities,” explains Jörg Hahn, ESA’s Galileo Head of Engineering.

This year, ESA had its largest testing portfolio yet. From new encrypted signals to sophisticated antennas, the team was busy testing technologies for a range of ESA navigation programmes. 

Galileo achieved first civil authenticated position fix with Signal Authentication Service

For two hours on the afternoon of Wednesday 16 September, five operational Galileo satellites broadcasting over Europe transmitted a new encrypted signal for testing. On the ground at Jammertest, receivers successfully established their location using these encrypted signals, marking the first real-world positioning using Galileo’s upcoming Signal Authentication Service (SAS). 

SAS, including the already available Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA), will allow receivers to detect and reject a wide range of spoofing attacks. 

This achievement was possible thanks to the close cooperation between the partners in the Galileo programme: ESA, the European Commission and its Joint Research Centre, and the European Union Agency for the Space Programme. Read more about this milestone here. 

Receivers track Celeste signals

Back in April, engineers in ESA’s navigation lab captured the first signals from the two Celeste demonstration satellites. Since then, they have been testing all their capabilities, confirming the strong potential of satellites in low Earth orbit to support resilient navigation solutions. 

At Jammertest, both satellites flew over Andøya, providing a unique opportunity to track the signals in realistic conditions.  

Celeste’s signals were loud and clear, with preliminary results indicating that they were acquired by receivers on ground, also under contested conditions.  

The data collected will be further analysed at ESA ESTEC’s navigation laboratory. 

Horizon Europe monitoring stations for EGNOS

The EGNOS team also contributed equipment for the ESA team to test: two monitoring station prototypes designed to increase the system’s flexibility and robustness.

Developed under the Horizon Europe programme, the stations underwent their first field tests at last year’s Jammertest. Building on the lessons learnt, upgraded versions of the receivers were back in Bleik this year for further testing.

The goal is for these stations to become operational for the next generation of EGNOS receivers and available for safety of life applications.

NAVISP, driving innovation across the PNT ecosystem

Many NAVISP partners took part in Jammertest, with at least three conducting tests linked to their NAVISP projects: 

• NetInsight tested their brand new Zyntai TimeNode Access, a device that distributes precise timing services for 5G and media, but also for critical infrastructure users.  
• Dimetor collected information for their NAVSentry solution, which aims to use current telecommunications infrastructure to detect spoofing and jamming. 
• Testnor, the organiser entity of Jammertest, recorded data for their playback service. 

Other entities in the NAVISP ecosystem that were present at Jammertest include ANavS, the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, Fugro Norway, Indra Space, Kongsberg Discovery, Leonardo, NTNU, Oscilloquartz, Septentrio, Space Norway, Syntony GNSS, Thales Alenia Space Italia, u-blox and Xona Space Systems UK. 

While the field campaign is finished, the work is far from over. ESA teams have dozens of terabytes of data to postprocess. Results derived from this week’s testing will keep feeding into the programmes throughout the year as lessons learnt, to further strengthen European satellite navigation systems and technologies.