ADS-B Signal Verification Using a Coherent Receiver

Abstract

Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) enables aircraft to periodically broadcast their flight states such as position and velocity. Compared to classical radar surveillance, it increases update rate and accuracy. Currently, Mode S Extended Squitter is the most common implementation for ADS-B. Due to the simplicity of Mode S design, ADS-B signals are prone to injections. This study proposes a cost-effective solution that verifies the integrity of ADS-B signals using coherent receivers. We design the verification approach by combining the signal’s direction of arrival, estimated from the multi-channel data, with the target bearing calculated from ADS-B messages. By using another high-performance software-defined radio transceiver, we also conduct real signal injection experiments to validate our approaches.