Academics crack Euro GPS satellite

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 12 Jul 2006 at 14:16

Signals from Europe's answer to the US GPS satellite system have been cracked by a team of American researchers led by professor Mark Psiaki of Cornell University.

The £2.3bn project Galileo is designed to outshine the US GPS satellite constellation with far greater accuracy, and has also been billed as being able to pay for itself, as governments and the private sector would be willing to pay for access to pin-point location services.

However, an article in GPS World magazine details how professor Psiaki managed to decode the encrypted signals from the first test Galileo satellite, GIOVE-A, showing that the general public would be able to use the signals without paying a penny.

In a statement the professor said: 'That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices.'

The experiment was carried out using a simple patch antenna mounted on a roof which relayed signals to a storage unit. Subsequent analysis resulted in the removal of interference as well as parts of the GIOVE-A signal that were redundant to the experiment. Lastly the data within the signal was analysed to determine the pseudorandom noise (PRN) codes necessary to access the signals from the system.

This has put pressure on the project, due to launch in 2010, which is part funded by the EU, the European Space Agency, and the private sector, which includes the involvement of companies linked to the Chinese government.

Galileo representatives have said that the current signal structure is not necessarily that which will be used for the operational system. The European Commission has also said that these final codes will be published at that time.