Performance analysis of direct GPS spoofing detection method with AHRS/accelerometer

Abstract

The global positioning system (GPS) is an essential technology that provides positioning capabilities and is used in various applications such as navigation, surveying, mapping, robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), location-based service (LBS), etc. However, the GPS is known to be vulnerable to intentional attacks such as spoofing because of its simple signal structure. In this study, a direct method is proposed for GPS spoofing detection, using Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) accelerometer and analyzing the detection performance with corresponding probability density functions (PDFs). The difference in the acceleration between the GPS receiver and the accelerometer is used to detect spoofing. The magnitude of the acceleration error may be used as a decision variable. Additionally, using the magnitude of the north (or east) component of the acceleration error as another decision variable is proposed, which shows better performance in some conditions. The performance of the two decision variables is compared by calculating the probability of spoofing detection and the detectable minimum spoofing acceleration (DMSA), given a pre-defined false alarm probability and a pre-defined detection probability. It turns out that both decision variables need to be used together to obtain the best spoofing detection performance. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.