Mitigation of Frequency-Hopped Tick Jamming Signals

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) jamming is an evolving technology where new modulations are progressively introduced in order to reduce the impact of interference mitigation techniques such as Adaptive Notch Filters (ANFs). The Standardisation of GNSS Threat reporting and Receiver testing through International Knowledge Exchange, Experimentation and Exploitation (STRIKE3) project recently described a new class of jamming signals, called tick signals, where a basic frequency tick is hopped over a large frequency range. In this way, discontinuities are introduced in the instantaneous frequency of the jamming signals. These discontinuities reduce the effectiveness of ANFs, which unable to track the jamming signal. This paper analyses the effectiveness of interference mitigation techniques with respect to frequency-hopped tick jamming signals. ANFs and Robust Interference Mitigation (RIM) techniques are analysed. From the analysis, it emerges that, despite the presence of frequency discontinuities, ANFs provide some margin against tick signals. However, frequency discontinuities prevent ANFs to remove all the jamming components and receiver operations are denied for moderate Jamming to Noise power ratio (J/N) values, RIM techniques are not affected by the presence of frequency discontinuities and significantly higher jamming power are sustained by the receiver when this type of techniques is adopted.