The challenge the UK faces is how to deliver, rapidly and competitively, the economical, societal, and environmental benefits that Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) have to offer. Through Zenzic, Government and industry have committed to develop a coordinated national platform of CAV testing infrastructure. These facilities are at the heart of testing, development and validation of safe and secure products and services, forecasted to impact the UK's economy to a total of £62 billion in annual economic benefits by 2030. In this project, Spirent Communications & WMG’s Connectivity and Communications Technology group aim to demonstrate and determine the feasibility of a new observer based technique to 'attack' and test CAV PNT-related functions in both controlled and real-world scenarios.

The testing adopted in this project was based on a “Lab2Live” approach, whereby, lab tests with repeatability were carried out on different commercially available GNSS receivers for CAVs and real world testing of a Level 4 CAV. With respect to testing methodology (lab and real world), jamming and spoofing tests were carried out using a R&S vector signal generator to generate chirp (interference) signals and Spirent’s PNT attack emulator (PNTAE). Typical parameters investigated during the attacks on the receivers and/or a complete CAV system include signal power of the satellite vehicles (SV) in view, the number of visible SVs, and the time-to-first-fix (TTFF) when signals were intentionally or partly interrupted. With the PNTAE’s 2-vehicle 1 RF setup, spoofing tests involved the generation of corrupt GNSS data, such as SV clock bias and health as well as false positions (static or dynamic). With the testing methodology, the behaviour of the CAV with respect to its response to these attacks was evaluated.

From the project, two industry guidance reports for best practice were also produced. These reports explore the team’s innovative methods for measuring and monitoring PNT-related aspects of CAV cyber security, defining a set of requirements for a future cyber security facility/capability and understanding the commercial landscape for such a facility.

People

Dr Matthew Higgins, Reader

Dr Erik Kampert, Senior Research Fellow

Dr Elijah Adegoke, Research Fellow

Dr Matthew Bradbury, Research Fellow

Jasmine Zidan, PhD Candidate

Funder

Innovate UK