Modular, Secure and Affordable Design for NextGen ADS-B Integration

Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) protocol provides significant benefits such as increased air safety and improved air-traffic conflict detection and resolution since it allows other aircrafts in the vicinity to know their relative positions without relying on an infrastructure. Despite the years of work on the development of standards, testing, etc., the ADS-B protocol does not specify mechanisms to ensure that the protocol messages are either authentic or adhere to any security properties. Due to this vulnerability, the ADS-B transmissions can be easily spoofed, modified or hijacked. Thus, the issue of secure transmissions is one of the key aspects of our proposal which makes this opportunity significant for the civil and defense aviation community. In this proposal, we recommend asystem that will assure secure ADS-B transmissions, while being a cost-effective architecture for providing modularity, affordability, and speed of deployment. The proposed architecture for NextGen ADS-B integration does not require any modifications to the ADS-B Transceiver, and thus can be implemented without any delays before the year 2020 mandate set by the FAA and combat authorities.We propose to illustrate a laboratory scale concept of this design and demonstrate its proof-of-concept during Phase I, using ground/air equipment, time and resources permitting.