A new remedy against Russian jammers is being tested in Ukraine: how smartphones help

Zephr experts say the enemy’s electronic warfare capabilities make it extremely difficult for Ukrainian troops to use drones and precision missiles, but mobile smartphones should give them a big advantage.

US company Zephr is working in Ukraine to develop a mobile phone-based system that would protect against Russian electronic warfare disrupting GPS satellite navigation. Defense One realized this.

In late 2023, the Ukrainian military approached Sean Gorman and his team at Zephr, a company that specializes in protecting devices from GPS signal interference. It soon shipped six Pixel phones with custom software to Ukraine and began field testing near the front lines in the Donetsk region in April.

As Sean Gorman tells it, researchers placed smartphones on drones, cars, and fixed stands and then conducted experiments to detect “jammers.” That’s why the Ukrainians used REB vehicles whose location was known.

The team first wanted to test whether regular mobile phones operating on the same network could indicate the presence of equipment attempting to corrupt location data. As it turns out, if you compare the reception of GPS signals by different devices, you can detect that one or more of them is under attack.

This uses the phone’s built-in sensors to help determine the distance to satellites, cell phone base stations, and other equipment. Manufacturers install these so that the device can optimize its performance (for example, connect to the nearest tower). Additionally, such measurements are important in GPS signal processing software and satellite positioning.

“Because of the computational AI and complexity of a lot of the signal processing and software we use on the server side, there’s a lot that can be done by combining multiple phones into one large distributed antenna, rather than just relying on sensors or really expensive antenna arrays,” said Sean Gorman.

Russia uses electronic warfare capabilities to jam or spoof GPS signals (a technique called “spoofing”). This prevents Ukrainian soldiers from using drones and other weapons, including American precision-guided missiles. A popular tactic is to spoof the signal so that the drone thinks it is in a limited area and needs to land. Russia also spoofs GPS signals in the Baltic Sea, causing receivers to display incorrect location data and creating a situation that NATO officials describe as unsafe for aircraft.

Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines in the Donetsk region often report drone attacks using spoofing. Sean Gorman’s team found that most of this activity was caused by powerful jammers. Because jamming occurs in the same frequency bands as GPS or GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), they appear as satellite signals, effectively creating phantom or phantom satellites in places where they cannot exist, for example over the horizon.

“This noise does not resemble a typical GNSS signal but contains energy at the frequencies at which the receiver searches for satellite signals. Receiver signal processing algorithms use correlation techniques to identify and track satellite signals. When a strong jamming signal is present, Gorman wrote in a test report provided by Defense One. He explained that it can cause spurious correlations by making the receiver “think” it is detecting satellites that are not actually visible.

It is very difficult to detect interfering devices; expensive electronic reconnaissance equipment with modern software is often required. Cheap systems capable of detecting Russian jammers would greatly assist Ukraine during the war and allow it to regain its advantage in UAVs. In addition, this will be useful for Ukrainian mobile operators to protect themselves from attacks.

Currently, a team led by Sean Gorman is working under contract with the Ukrainian government and is trying to take the investigation to the next level by not only identifying the sources of interference, but also determining their exact location. If this is successful, the army will be able to bypass areas of intervention or destroy their resources. Although researchers do not consider this method a panacea.

“Each smartphone will detect the jammer signal, record its last known location, and timestamp the reception, providing data points across the entire network. The system will triangulate the jammer’s location by centrally combining and processing these signals,” Gorman said. email.

They had previously written that Ukrainian vehicles of REB were suppressing the “Shaheds”. The systems jam satellite navigation signals in a specific area, disorienting the attack drone, but it still has a chance of finding its target.

Source: Focus

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