ADS-B vulnerability to low cost jammers: Risk assessment and possible solutions

Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) systems provide to the air traffic control centers flight and status information of the cooperating targets. Problems due to jamming and/or spoofing of the ADS-B channel are under study, as well as verification and validation techniques. In this paper, we show how a low cost jammer can affect an ADS-B receiver. Three types of threats were evaluated. A multichannel receiver permitted to evaluate the received signal stream with and without jammer. The measurements were carried out coupling the receiver antenna with the in-cable jammer radio frequency (1090 MHz) signal. The results show the detection loss as a function of jammer range and jammer type. Finally, possible solutions are proposed to mitigate the effects. Some trials to evaluate their effectiveness are described.