Vulnerability analysis of the global navigation satellite systems from the information flow perspective

As a complex distributed system, the global navigation satellite systems is vulnerable to a wide range of interference and threats. In this paper we analysis the vulnerability of the global navigation satellite systems from a perspective of the information flow. A general process comprised of three steps which are static analysis, dynamic analysis and synthetic analysis is proposed, and we focus on the first step-static analysis in this paper. After analyzing the concepts and characteristics of the information flow in the global navigation satellite systems, four vulnerability measures of the information flow are defined, and then according to the matrix model that based on the network of the information flows, the authors show the calculation method of the vulnerability measures along with a sample case. The authors conclude that the measures along with their calculation method which defined from information flow perceptive can be applied to the vulnerability analysis of the global navigation satellite systems.