Protecting Canada’s Infrastructure: Strengthening Positioning Navigation, and Timing Technologies (Exploring the New GNSS Funding Opportunity for Canada’s Critical Infrastructure)

Introduction

Modern society heavily relies on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information. GNSS, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), not only provides navigation information for airplanes, ships, and autonomous vehicles but also delivers critical timing information for communication networks, power grids, and financial transactions. As London Economics describes, “GNSS is an umbrella term for an infrastructure that provides PNT information via satellites orbiting in space. This information allows users with a compatible receiver (e.g., a smartphone) to determine their position, velocity, and precise universal and local time.” GNSS has become an “invisible” yet essential utility, underpinning most modern infrastructures and operations.

Funding Opportunity

To enhance public safety and security capabilities in Canada, the Canadian Safety and Security Program (CSSP) has issued a new call for proposals. This initiative aims to fund projects that leverage GNSS technology to protect Canada’s infrastructure. This funding opportunity allows researchers and institutions to explore the impacts of GNSS signal spoofing and other threats. CSSP’s call for proposals focuses on innovative science and technology solutions to increase awareness of GPS dependencies, assess operational vulnerabilities, and develop alternative and complementary PNT technologies to strengthen the resilience of Canada’s civilian critical infrastructure.

Research Themes

The call for proposals highlights several key areas of focus:

1. Increasing Awareness of GNSS Uses and Vulnerabilities:
   • Studying GNSS Dependencies: Investigate the dependency of Canadian critical infrastructure sectors on GNSS and create PNT profiles for various use cases.
   • Assessing GNSS Disruption Impacts: Analyze the potential impacts of GNSS signal disruptions on key areas such as traffic management, energy supply, and financial transactions.
   • Raising Awareness of GNSS Vulnerabilities: Conduct research to reveal the vulnerabilities of GNSS systems when faced with threats like interference, spoofing, cyber-attacks, and space weather.
   • Developing Situational Awareness Technologies: Develop and demonstrate technologies and tools to enhance situational awareness during GNSS disruption events, helping users respond to signal interference and outages in real-time.
2. Operational Vulnerability Assessments:
   • Developing Assessment Tools: Create and showcase tools to evaluate the operational environment or user equipment response under threat conditions, improving awareness of potential vulnerabilities.
   • Testing Device Performance: Test device performance under adverse operating conditions, such as interference, spoofing, and space weather phenomena, ensuring reliable operation in harsh environments.
   • Simulating GNSS Disruptions: Simulate GNSS disruptions and their impacts on various systems and operations, helping to develop response measures and contingency plans.
3. Development and Demonstration of Alternative and Complementary PNT Technologies:
   • Researching Alternative Technologies: Explore the potential of alternative and complementary PNT technologies that can provide reliable PNT information during GNSS signal disruptions.
   • Developing Resilient Technologies: Develop hardware and software technologies to enhance PNT resilience, ensuring accurate positioning and timing services even when GNSS signals are compromised.
   • Demonstrating PNT Performance: Showcase technologies and solutions that guarantee PNT performance during GNSS disruption events, verifying their practical applications.

Impact on Canada

Canada’s critical infrastructure (CI) increasingly relies on GPS/GNSS-based PNT data. However, many CI owners and operators are unaware of how their equipment performs when faced with various threats such as interference, spoofing, cyber-attacks, space weather, and GPS/GNSS failures. These threats can have significant impacts on Canada’s economy, safety, and public security. Here are some specific areas of impact:

• Traffic Management: GPS signal disruptions can lead to flight delays, increased collision risks for ships, and the failure of traffic management systems. For example, if the GPS signals guiding an airplane are spoofed or jammed, it could result in incorrect flight paths, potentially leading to accidents. Similarly, shipping routes that rely on GPS could become inaccurate, increasing the risk of collisions and grounding incidents, affecting public transportation and logistics.
• Energy Supply: Power grids rely on GPS-provided time synchronization to ensure stable and efficient operations. A disruption in GPS signals could cause desynchronization in the grid, leading to blackouts, equipment damage, and inefficient power distribution. For instance, the loss of accurate timing signals could prevent the coordination of power supply and demand, leading to cascading failures across the grid.
• Financial Transactions: The financial system relies on precise timestamps for transactions to ensure accuracy and security. Disruptions in GNSS signals can cause significant errors in transaction timings, leading to potential financial losses, market instability, and reduced trust in financial systems. High-frequency trading platforms, which execute trades in fractions of a second, are particularly vulnerable to such timing errors.
• Emergency Services: Emergency response units, including ambulances, fire trucks, and police vehicles, depend on GNSS for navigation and coordination. Inaccurate GNSS data could delay response times, misguide emergency units, and hinder coordination during critical situations, potentially endangering lives.
• Telecommunications: Communication networks rely on GNSS for network synchronization. Disruptions can affect the quality and reliability of voice and data services. For example, mobile phone networks use GNSS for timing to ensure seamless handovers between cell towers. Any disruption could degrade network performance, causing dropped calls and slower data speeds.

Additionally, existing research and development (R&D) may not fully address Canada’s unique context, such as CI jurisdiction/structure or ownership, interdependencies, reliance on open sharing of international data, R&D investments, fiscal climate, and unique PNT requirements in the North. For instance, safe and secure Arctic navigation and the need for increased GNSS radio occultation data to support accurate weather prediction systems in sparsely observed regions are critical for Canada. The Arctic region, with its harsh weather conditions and sparse population, poses unique challenges for GNSS reliability and accuracy, necessitating specialized solutions.

Application Guidelines

Interested researchers and institutions can find more details via the following link: Information Link, and submit their applications via the following link: Application Link. For the Application materials include a research plan, budget, and team profiles, with evaluation criteria focusing on the project’s innovation, feasibility, and expected impact. The application guidelines specify the steps and materials required to ensure applicants can successfully complete the application process.

Conclusion

This funding opportunity offers a valuable platform for researchers and institutions to explore and address GNSS signal spoofing issues. Through this research, we can enhance Canada’s public safety and infrastructure protection capabilities, ensuring a safer and more reliable future. We hope that more researchers and institutions will participate in this important research, contributing to Canada’s safety and sustainable development.