Jamming of GPS receivers

GPS is a radio navigation system that provides accurate navigation signals to any place on Earth. Although GPS was originally designed for military applications, GPS has also been used in many civilian applications. The reliability of GPS receivers and the availability of GPS signals have become crucial in the fast-growing use of GPS in military and civilian applications. GPS is designed as a spread spectrum system in order to provide resistance to jamming. Denial of service of GPS receivers in some European countries (intentional or unintentional jamming) has been reported. In addition, the production of GPS jammers increases doubts about GPS signal availability and GPS receiver reliability. The paper aims to investigate GPS receiver performance under different jamming waveforms. In order to determine GPS receiver performance, the GPS signal structure has been analyzed, and GPS jamming strategies and GPS receiver architectures have been investigated. A generic GPS receiver model is implemented using the MATLAB/SIMULINK tool. Since jamming strategies mainly disturb a GPS receiver´s signal processing functions, only the signal processing functions of the GPS receiver are investigated. The effect of several GPS jamming strategies are investigated by simulation.