The Effects of Jamming on Global Positioning System (GPS) Accuracy for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are vulnerable to a number of threats, including jamming. Jamming is the act of intentionally directing electromagnetic energy towards a communication and / or navigation system to disrupt or prevent signal transmission and reception. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) jammers transmit interference signals in the frequency band used for satellite navigation. Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) filter as a potential solution to mitigate the jamming activity. The effectiveness of FSS depends on the incidence angle of the jamming signals. It is important to characterize the GPS performance of the UAV in the absence of the FSS filter, which will be used as a benchmark for modelling the appropriate FSS filter. Hence, this paper aims to investigate preliminary effects of jamming signal on UAV. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of Global Positioning System (GPS) jamming on UAVs based on two different conditions, namely, varying times and rotation angles. The study was conducted using GPS simulation in an anechoic chamber to prevent external interferences and multipath. Different estimated probable error (EPE) patterns are observed at different times due to the GPS satellite constellation being dynamic. This indicates that GPS accuracy is time-dependent. The results also show that the presence of a jammer imposes a significant effect on GPS accuracy when the jammer signal reaches -89 dBm. The significance of this work is to provide a solution to prevent GPS jamming and ensure safe and reliable UAV navigation by using a frequency selective surface (FSS) filter for future work.