GPS data: Company launches fault detector for satellite navigation

The well-known Swedish aircraft tracker Flightradar24 has a new one GPS interference display service started. A map shows in red or yellow in which regions satellite navigation is affected by interference or targeted interference. Currently these are primarily Poland and the adjacent Baltic Sea, Latvia, the north of Turkey on the Black Sea, Iran and the coasts off Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

GPS interference can be caused by electromagnetic radiation from electronic devices, atmospheric conditions or solar activity. Intentional disruptions are often caused by the military. For example, jamming signals emitted from the ground are intended to mislead enemy drones or missiles programmed to target targets. However, smaller transmitters are also available on the Internet with which private individuals can also cause disruption in smaller areas.

Over the Levant, the entire Ukraine, but also large parts of Africa and the world’s major oceans, Flightradar24’s new map is grayed out and thus refers to the method in which the Stockholm company analyzes the interference. “At the moment, GPS interference is only calculated using data from areas where there are a sufficient number of flights,” writes Flightradar24 on its own website.

The data used comes from aircraft transponders, which regularly communicate location and direction. These radio signals, sent via the Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) system, are received by satellites or ground antennas and used by the state air traffic control, but also by providers such as Flightradar24.

The ADS-B messages also encode the quality of the GPS data received from the aircraft. This allows air traffic control to see how reliable the position data is. Flightradar24 uses the same value to calculate the disruption and interference in GPS reception.

Users can choose whether they want to view the map in a six-hour or 24-hour resolution. A slide show of previous events is also possible. For example, it can be seen how regularly the signals from the navigation systems have been disrupted over the Baltic Sea for months.

The various global satellite navigation systems are grouped together as GNSS. These include the US GPS (which is often mistakenly used as a term for all services), the Russian GLONASS, the European Galileo or the Chinese BeiDou.