Design, build, and test a hand-held GPS Interference Detector

Abstract

The Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signal is extremely vulnerable to intentional and unintentional interference. Increased dependence on GPS by military users has created a need to quickly detect and locate interference at its source. Current methods for detecting and locating GPS interference sources employ a network of multiple sensors to identify interference. The data collected from sensors is then sent to a remote centralized processing station and analyzed to determine the location of the interference source. Although this method has demonstrated effectiveness in this endeavor, it introduces latency between the time of detection at the sensor, and the location of the source. The intent of this thesis is to investigate whether a portable hand held interference detection system can provide more timely detection and location information to provide the actionable intelligence to the disadvantaged GPS users.