GNSS Anti-jam RF-to-RF On Board Unit for

ERTMS Train Control

Cosimo Stallo1, Pietro Salvatori1, Andrea Coluccia1, Alessandro Neri1, Francesco Rispoli1,
Massimiliano Ciaffi2

1 RadioLabs
2 RFI

1
Outline

• ERTMS and Virtual Balise Concept

• Characterization of GNSS performance

• Jamming issue and anti-jamming filter design guidelines

• Performance analysis

• Conclusions

2
 Research Consortium

Radiolabs is involved on major international research projects

with ESA, ASI, GSA and Centers of Excellence

Leader on scientific research for safety-critical geo-localization

Università
degli Studi
de l’Aquila
GNSS Interferences in Railway
Critical issue:
Intentional Interferences
(jamming, spoofing and meaconing)

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA

Introduction
Possible GNSS interferences must be analysed and mitigated
to ensure the ERTMS can operate with GNSS positioning
without degradations:

Reference scenario: ERTMS level 2 with Virtual Balise

 Evaluation of interference scenarios and identification of mitigation strategy.
 Analysis of performance for the Virtual Balise architecture
GNSS Automated Virtualized Test Environment for Rail (GATE4Rail) deals with tasks TD2.4 and TD2.6 of the Shift2Rail Multi
Annual Action Plan. Particularly, its main goals are: i) achieving a realistic characterization of the environment in terms of
railway and GNSS infrastrustructures able to evaluate the performances and properties of some fail-safe train positioning
components in nominal and fault conditions; ii) defining a common test process framework for zero on-site testing instead of
testing on-site saving effort and time.
The project “Digital Beamforming for Rail” DB4RAIL aims at designing, developing and prototyping a software digital
beamforming platform for antenna array coupled with advanced GNSS signal processing techniques for high rejection of GNSS
interfering signals, including jamming and spoofing, to be used for supporting the evolution of the LDS based on GNSS in
ERTMS/ETCS.

5
ERTMS/ETCS
The European standard for railway signaling is the ERTMS / ETCS
(European Railway Traffic Management System / European Train
Control System) is the standard for European railways.
Operational at the moment Next frontier

signal
Interlocking and
Radio Block Center
ETCS
trainborne LEU Train ETCS
Integrity trainborne
Track circuit DRIVER
balise
Movement authorities
Balise (fixed message)

Level 1 Level 3
Movement authorities RBC

ETCS Interlockin Train must be able to evaluate its own

trainborne g
position and to determine whether all the
Track circuit
Balise carriages are still coupled
(fixed message)

Level 2
6
GNSS- based Virtual Balise Concept

TRACKSIDE ON BOARD UNIT(OBU) SPACE-SIDE

SENSOR

ODOMETRY
VIRTUAL A
BALISE BALISE
(location /data) READER POSITIONING BALISE N
READER T Virtual Balise
Linking Info
POSITION RADIO Position Report
REPORT BLOCK
VALIDAT. Virtual Balise location
CENTER
AUGM . Augmentation
EGNOS/
DISTR: ON_BOARD LDGNSS
SUPERVISION

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA

Characterisation of GNSS performance
1. Characterization of GNSS performance
2. Defining a common test process framework for zero on-site testing
instead of testing on-site saving effort and time;
3. Provide a laboratory test architecture capable of simulating railway
scenarios for GNSS-based ERTMS applications;

This project has received funding from

the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme
under grant agreement No: 826324

8
Reference Architecture

GNSS simulator GNSS receiver PVT engine

ERTMS Train traffic generator

9
Jamming, Spoofing, Meaconing
Jamming is the transmission of signals Spoofing is the intentional transmission of
that disturb the genuine reception: fake GNSS signals to make the receiver
estimate a wrong position and/or timing
Main consequences:

- Interference
- Denial of Service
Cryptography can mitigate the spoofing

Meaconing is the transmission of

recorded authentic GNSS signals to make
the receiver estimate a wrong position
and/or timing

Also cryptographically protected signals

could be affected by meaconing

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 10

Processing scheme

Anti-jamming
Space-Time filtering PVT
filtering

Antenna
Array

Resilient PVT

Filter to mitigate spoofing

and/or meaconing
Null-steering to mitigate the interference

N-channel antenna array with front-end

11
Ref. DB4Rail project ESA
GNSS Antenna Array Design
How Many elements? SWOT Analysis
Which Shape?

Strength Weakness Strength Weakness

COTS devices are Less degrees of More degrees of Less maturity in the
available freedom freedom development

Square Hexagonal
4 element 7 element

4 coherent channels Less nulls can be More nulls can be Difficult to have 7
front-end available put in the beam put in the beam coherent channels

Opportunities Threaths Opportunities Threaths

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 12

GNSS Antenna Array Development

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 13

Anti-jamming filtering

Jamming mitigation process can

be decomposed in 3 steps.
Jammer
DoA Detector
estimator

Spatial
filter

Anti-jamming filter

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 14

Hystogram comparison
The jammer presence can be detected by accounting for the
hystograms

J/S = 20dB J/S = 30dB

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 15

Jamming Detection

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 16

The p-value testing

The jammer detector

algorithm has been
calibrated by using GNSS
signals in absence of any
jammer signals, and the
following parameters have
been chosen:

• Detection period = 20 ms
• Number of bins = 16
• Level of significance = 10-4.

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 17

Jamming DoA estimation and mitigation

Different approaches can be

followed:

- Power minimization
- Null Steering
- Capon beamforming

The choice depends on a trade-off

among performance and
complexity

In this work we have implemented the Null-Steering

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 18

Simulation results: assumptions
N
360°
Elevation angle:
Range from 10 to 70 degrees
Span of 15 degrees

W E
270° 090°

S
180°

Azimuth angle:
Fixed 180 degrees

JSR:
Fixed 20 dB

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 19

Acquisition results (1)
Scenario - J/S = 20 dB, Jammer [Azimuth = 180°, Elevation = 10°]

Antenna 1 Null-steering

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 20

Acquisition results (2)
Scenario - J/S = 20 dB, Jammer [Azimuth = 180°, Elevation = 25°]

Antenna 1 Null-steering

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 21

Acquisition results (3)
Scenario - J/S = 20 dB, Jammer [Azimuth = 180°, Elevation = 40°]

Antenna 1 Null-steering

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 22

Acquisition results (4)
Scenario - J/S = 20 dB, Jammer [Azimuth = 180°, Elevation = 55°]

Antenna 1 Null-steering

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA 23

Acquisition results (5)
Scenario - J/S = 20 dB, Jammer [Azimuth = 180°, Elevation = 70°]

Antenna 1 Null-steering

Ref. DB4Rail project ESA

Overall solution
The anti-jamming mitigation platform developed in the ESA GSTP 6.2
DB4Rail project can be integrated in the GATE4Rail test-bed
architecture to create a unified test-bed architecture to test the
system resilience to RF interference and jamming.

Digital
Beamforming
GNSS Platform GNSS receiver PVT engine
simulator

ERTMS Train traffic generator

25
Gate4Rail Geo-Distributed Lab Concept

GATE4Rail architecture
for simulating railway
scenarios for GNSS-
based ERTMS
applications by
integrating different
simulation blocks and
by defining their
interfaces in order to
cover the global
simulation chain

The GATE4Rail proposal addresses the topic S2R-OC-IP2-02-2018 - Modern

methodologies and verifications for GNSS in Railways and virtual test environment.
26
Gate4Rail Architecture

27
Conclusions
• GNSS positioning for the ERTMS system needs a characterisation of RF signals
including those that can be affected by interferences. Our approach is to create a
unified test-bed architecture to test the system resilience to RF interference and
jamming by exploiting:

 the GNSS Anti-jam RF-to-RF On Board Unit optimized for ERTMS Train Control
(DB4Rail)
 the distributed test-facility to evaluate the GNSS performance with a zero-on-site
testing approach (Gate4Rail)

• Jamming can impact primarily on the ERTMS system availability and the antenna
array solution of the DB4Rail project can be used to mitigate such a threat

• GATE4Rail platform is ideal to test also the system anti-jamming capability in a

controlled environment that otherwise would require severe constraints and high
costs.

28
Gate4Rail project has received funding
from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under
grant agreement No: 826324
www.gate4rail.eu

www.radiolabs.it
29