Impact of GNSS-Band Radio Interference on Operational Avionics

GNSS outages due to intentional jamming affecting the airspace over the Eastern Mediterranean have received significant attention in recent years. In an effort to better understand the phenomenon and its impact on aviation hardware, DLR sent a data collection flight to the area. The flight was conducted in an Airbus 320, which allowed a study of the behavior of regular avionics and aviation-grade GNSS receivers under jamming conditions. Part of the experimental instrumentation included a high-definition radio-frequency recording device, which allows in-depth pre-correlation analysis of the radio spectrum around the main GPS and Galileo carrier frequencies. The results confirm that the observed outages likely stem from man-made radio interference. They also provide an in-situ opportunity to study the behavior of commercial avionics under GNSS interference conditions.