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Jammer Acquisition with GPS Exploration and Reconnaissance (JAGER)

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The current and expanding prevalence of GPS in the aviation industry has tremendously helped efficiency and safety, but it increases the potential risk posed by GPS jamming devices.  In an effort to combat and mitigate these risks, we are developing JAGER (Jamming Acquisition for GPS Exploration and Reconnaissance), a specially equipped multi-rotor drone capable of autonomously localizing GPS jammers.

Our approach to localization uses a UAV as a mobile sensor platform operating well above the noise and multipath rich environment near the ground to make bearing observations of the jamming signal at dynamically chosen positions in order to rapidly localize a GPS jammer.

Three main systems allow JAGER to rapidly localize GPS jammers: a sensing and measurement system, a path planning system, and a navigation system.  For sensing, JAGER uses a simple directional antenna and leverages the multi-rotor platform to determine bearing to the source of the jammer throughout its flight.  These observations are then used in a closed loop navigation controller to dynamically determine the next best measurement location to most quickly localize the jammer.  Finally, in order to successfully navigate in a GPS denied environment created by the jammer JAGER is designed to use vision, low cost inertials and the many signals of opportunity present near an airport.