With 10,000+ aviation events in 2021, ITU issues GNSS interference warning

By Dana A. Goward

Before this month, the Intercontinental Telecommunication Union (ITU) issued a circular urging its member states to avert interference with GNSS indicators and receivers.

ITU is the hottest United Nations overall body to express such considerations and challenge an advisory. The International Maritime Firm issued a very similar document in 2021, as did the Global Civil Aviation Group in 2020.

ITU is the United Nations company that deals with details and communications engineering. Its remit involves coordinating spectrum use and satellite orbits.

ITU’s Radio Communications Bureau sponsors the Environment Radiocommunication Meeting each individual 3 to 4 decades. The situation of interference with GNSS alerts was described at the 2019 convention.

Considering that that time, according to this month’s round, the team “has been educated of a important variety of scenarios of hazardous interference to the radionavigation-satellite service…”

Regardless of issues expressed by maritime and other pursuits, the circular focuses fully on aviation interference. It says the stories it has been given have been about “receivers onboard aircrafts and resulting in degradation or full decline of the support for passenger, cargo and humanitarian flights…” These have integrated “misleading data delivered by RNSS [radionavigation satellite service] receivers to pilots.” An often cited example of this is a nicely-publicized 2019 incident in Sunlight Valley, Idaho. In that scenario a passenger plane nearly strike a mountain.

Describing interference with GNSS as a international and recurrent challenge, the circular cites data gathered by a significant plane manufacturer. The business found “10,843 radio-frequency interference gatherings … globally in 2021. The majority of these functions occurred in the Center East region, but various occasions were also detected in the European, North American and Asian areas.”

This year’s uptick in GNSS interference in Scandinavia, the Baltics, and all around Ukraine considering the fact that Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine is not described. This is probably thanks, in part, to timing. ITU’s Radio Laws Board satisfied in March 2022 and directed the circular be issued.

Lots of within just the positioning, navigation, and timing neighborhood have very long asserted that interference with GNSS indicators, irrespective of whether deliberate or accidental, constitutes a violation of ITU procedures and rules. This month’s round affirms this and cites various relevant provisions.

These involve prohibitions on hazardous interference with any licensed radio frequency transmission, demands for users to transmit only in bands for which they have authorization, and for all to normally safeguard aviation operations.

The circular highlights provision 15.1 of ITU’s Radio Polices as particularly relevant. It states:

“All stations are forbidden to carry out pointless transmissions, or the transmission of superfluous alerts, or the transmission of phony or deceptive alerts, or the transmission of indicators with no identification…”

As is the case with nearly all intercontinental agreements, enforcement of ITU guidelines is the accountability of its member states.

Even though most be expecting the advisory to have minor speedy influence on reducing world-wide interference with GNSS signals, it does enable strengthen the situation as 1 of international concern.

In accordance to a retired government official, “Member states that fall short to comply with intercontinental regulations to which they have agreed shed believability and standing in the group of nations. Even when they have small trustworthiness or standing to commence with, the conduct provides to their marginalization and lifestyle is just a tiny more challenging for them. This can, in the lengthy operate, nudge them toward remaining additional accountable gamers.”