Advancements in the GIANO Project: Galileo based Timing Receiver for Increasing Critical Infrastructures Resilience

The GIANO Project Consortium, coordinated by Thales Alenia Space (TAS-I, Italy), with the support of DEIMOS Engenharia S.A. (Portugal), the Space Research Centre PAS in Poznan (Poland), Piktime System SP. Zoo (Poland) and Business Integration Partner S.p.a. (Italy), has been awarded a contract in the framework of the GSA’s “Fundamental Elements” program to develop a timing receiver for professional applications. The paper will report on the progress of the GIANO project, aiming to develop a high performance Galileo-Based Timing Receiver for Critical Infrastructure applications (Telco, Energy, Finance) with increased resilience. The robust, flexible and configurable GNSS receiver unit is able to track and process the Galileo (E1, E5), GPS (L1, L5) and SBAS L1/L5 signals. It includes jamming, spoofing multipath detection and mitigation functions, T-RAIM and OS-NMA support. The receiver will provide a highly accurate and stable 1PPS signal that can be synchronized to GST, GPST or UTC. The receiver includes a highly stable reference source and provides a variety of timing outputs, including NTP, PTP and IRIG-B codes, whose interfaces have been developed by Piktime. After the completion of the integration and preliminary internal tests, two GIANO receivers will be deployed for testing at different laboratories. The extensive final test campaign will take a few months and will include: • functional tests (including the absolute calibration of the receivers) performed by TAS-I. • receiver characterization on zero and short base lines (by installing one of the prototypes at a remote external facility) and performance verification when used in critical infrastructures applications and in scientific and metrological applications. All of these tests will be performed by the Space Research Centre PAS in Poznan (Poland). • tests to demonstrate the robustness and resilience of the receiver to jamming and spoofing of the GNSS signals will be performed at the European Joint Research Center (JRC, Italy) facilities. • timing validation, performed by installing one of the absolutely calibrated receivers at the Italian Metrology Institute (INRIM). The detailed verification process foreseen in the GIANO project will objectively provide evidence that the receivers are indeed fulfilling the specified requirements and characteristics necessary for operation in a difficult environment. The paper will present the preliminary results of the integration phase of the GNSS and timing modules that compose the GIANO platform. The testing plan of a timing receiver with network timing capabilities will be presented, with preliminary results of the test approach for NTP/PTP and IRIG-B protocols.