FANTASTIC

Field Aware Navigation and Timing Authentication Sensor for Timing Infrastructure and Centimeter level positioning

Precise Point Positioning (PPP) is the preferred positioning technique in many applications such as precision agriculture, offshore applications, and scientific applications, particularly at remote locations where augmentation signals can be received via satellite link. However, there are availability limitations for current commercial services, which are based on geostationary satellites and thus experience visibility problems. 

The FANTASTIC project was conceived to substantially broaden the scope of professional GNSS applications, making them work in harsher conditions, where they can’t today.

FANTASTIC developed the technology for the optimal exploitation of the PPP data provided by the Galileo High Accuracy Service. It shall be a key component in professional positioning and timing applications. Based on an innovative “field aware” antenna technology combined with a multi-frequency receiver, leveraging Galileo-specific features such as the Commercial Service, pilot channels and frequency diversity, FANTASTIC aims to substantially broaden the scope of professional GNSS applications and improve current PPP performance. 

Innovations introduced in this project is based on the processing of the Galileo E6 Commercial Service, which is expected to improve current PPP performance with its enhanced navigation message. Furthermore, a new antenna and receiver design is conceived to maximise the advantages provided by Galileo, enabling the selection of the best signals and the mitigation of interference.

Challenge and technical solution

The biggest challenge was to address spoofing attacks based on a perfect, or nearly perfect, signal replica. In fact, in the verification of a spoofing attack, the spoofed satellite signals all have the same polarisation. Hence, the idea was to exploit this property to detect and reject the spoofing signals with the help of a newly developed dual-polar E1/L2/E5/E6 antenna optimised for polarisation purity, avoiding antenna-induced spill-over from one polarisation into the other.