WASHINGTON — Sept. 15, 2017 — ATIS today announced release of a major resource to help better understand and address a formidable telecommunications industry challenge: the vulnerabilities in the Global Positioning System (GPS). Requirements for precise time delivery have driven the industry toward the increased use of GPS and GPS-dependent technologies. Yet this dependency has left the industry vulnerable to disruptions and manipulations of the GPS signal. GPS Vulnerability (ATIS-0900005) provides insight into the sources of the most common problems with GPS and their impacts. The report also covers several mature proposed solutions that would satisfy telecommunications sector timing requirements.
“GPS disruptions have economic, financial and service impacts to carrier network operators, suppliers, cellular services as well as adjacent industries and government agencies that depend on a functioning wireless communications sector,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller. “We believe that our report on this topic will contribute to solutions to help secure the delivery of time — a function critical to many sectors in our economy.”
Known vulnerabilities to deliver GPS time to a system include environmental phenomena, malicious interference and spoofing, incidental interference, adjacent band interference, poor antenna installations, and rare but present GPS segment errors. GPS Vulnerability discusses techniques to address these vulnerabilities as well as alternatives to GPS timing, with the goal of mitigating GPS vulnerabilities for the timing receivers used in the critical infrastructure. Alternatives covered in the report include Navigational Message Authentication on modernized GPS civil signals, atomic clock time holdover, sync over fiber, eLoran, WWVB, terrestrial beacons and more.
Access GPS Vulnerability in the ATIS Document Center.
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About ATIS
As a leading technology and solutions development organization, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) brings together the top global ICT companies to advance the industry’s most pressing business priorities. ATIS’ 150 member companies are currently working to address 5G, cyber security, IoT, the all-IP transition, network functions virtualization, smart cities, big data analytics, cloud services, device solutions, emergency services, network evolution, quality of service, billing support, operations, and much more. These priorities follow a fast-track development lifecycle – from design and innovation through standards, specifications, requirements, business use cases, software toolkits, open source solutions, and interoperability testing.
ATIS is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). ATIS is the North American Organizational Partner for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a founding Partner of the oneM2M global initiative, a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), as well as a member of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL). For more information, visit www.atis.org.
