Europe's Galileo Completes First Civilian Anti-Spoofing Authenticated Positioning Test with 5 Satellites Participating

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 17, the European Space Agency announced the results of the first real-world test of the Galileo satellite navigation system's Signal Authentication Service (SAS). From 14:00 to 16:00 UTC on September 16, five in-orbit Galileo satellites E06, E21, E23, E34, and E36 continuously transmitted encrypted E6-C signals over Europe for two hours. Receivers at the Andøya test site in Norway and the ESTEC navigation laboratory in the Netherlands both successfully completed positioning using the encrypted signals. This marks the first time Galileo SAS has achieved civilian authenticated positioning in a real spoofing interference environment.

This test was conducted during Jammertest in Norway. At the test site, Norwegian authorities actively created various GNSS interference and spoofing scenarios, and the European Space Agency and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre used this environment to verify SAS performance under actual interference conditions. During the test, the E6-C signal component originally transmitted in plaintext by the five satellites was encrypted, operating at a frequency of 1278.75 MHz, and ground receivers still completed position solutions in the presence of spoofing signals.

SAS primarily authenticates satellite ranging signals and works in conjunction with the already operational Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA). A GNSS receiver needs both the navigation message and the satellite-to-receiver ranging data to complete positioning. OSNMA is used to confirm that the navigation message was indeed generated by the Galileo system, while SAS further verifies the source of the ranging signals. With these two capabilities combined, receivers can simultaneously check the authenticity of both navigation data and range measurements, and thereby identify and reject multiple types of spoofing signals.

OSNMA became operational in 2025, and this SAS test extends Galileo's civilian anti-spoofing capability from navigation message authentication to ranging signal authentication. The European Space Agency, the European Commission, and the European Union Agency for the Space Programme have previously completed relevant satellite and ground system upgrades, enabling the current Galileo satellites to support new encrypted signal testing. For this test, the European Commission defined the service concept, while the European Space Agency and the European Union Agency for the Space Programme were responsible for system design and technical modifications to the space segment and ground segment.

According to the current plan, the European Union Agency for the Space Programme will conduct SAS service validation and certification in 2027 jointly with the European Commission, the European Space Agency, and industry partners, after which it will enter the formal operational phase. Both SAS and OSNMA are planned to be made available to users worldwide free of charge, and Galileo's High Accuracy Service will subsequently also incorporate the relevant authentication capabilities.

Galileo currently provides open service to users worldwide, with applications covering smartphones, railways, shipping, agriculture, financial timing, and search and rescue, among other fields. Following the completion of this SAS positioning test in a real spoofing environment, the project's subsequent work will move into the service validation, certification, and formal operation preparation phase.