Jamming efficacy of variable altitude GPS jammer against airborne GPS receiver, theoretical study and parametric simulation

Abstract

Satellite-based navigation systems, as one of the key infrastructure of development in manned and unmanned guidance systems, is vulnerable against the simplest form of attack in Electronic Warfare environments. This led us to investigate the described vulnerability of an airborne GPS receiver against jammers which are located at various altitude above the targeted point. To do that and to avoid encountering with unavailability of classified information about military-class missiles, some simplification was done and the problem was investigated in “Worst Case” conditions. Finally, the flight profile and radiation pattern of the antenna of the GPS receiver were theoretically modeled. Considering some assumptions, the other parameters were derived from them. At the end, a simulation software was developed and some results were extracted. The data was represented figuratively and the dependency of efficacy of jamming operation to the jammer’s altitude and flight profile of the missile were discussed.