GNU Radio Based Testbed (GRaTe-BED)
GNU Radio Based Testbed (GRaTe-BED)
GNU Radio Based Testbed (GRaTe-BED)
Abstract: UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) are commonly used in 3D (dull, dirty
and dangerous) missions, because these are not endangering the operators life, while
reduce maintenance costs and increase maneuvering capabilities. Despite of these
advantages we should consider the possible vulnerabilities of this technology as well.
Unmanned vehicles can be controlled via direct communication link, or they can work
in a preprogrammed mode. Usually the preprogrammed mode is based on radio
navigation systems, so we can draw a conclusion that both depend on the RF
environment. In this paper I analyze a possibility to effectively evaluate the
communication link of an UAS. Developers have to consider several key factors (type
of operation, endurance, payload type and size, propulsion, communication link, etc.)
during the development process. They are also responsible that the final product meets
the predefined requirements. On the other side commercial UAS owners should have a
possibility to compare and evaluate the UAS before the acquisition. Finally, operators
and frequency management entities need tools to diagnose the possible sources of
interference regarding the unmanned vehicles. To understand the consequences of
interference in the RF spectrum we have to be able to measure the quality of the
communication link in different usage scenarios. In my research I evaluate the usage of
SDRs (Software Defined Radios) in RF Test and Evaluation processes. After analyzing
the possibilities for a flexible testbed, I demonstrate the usability with some
measurements in the GNU Radio signal processing framework.
Keywords: UAS, SDR, RF, Test & Evaluation, USRP, GNU Radio.
1. Introduction
There are multiple names for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) like drone,
remotely operated aircraft (ROA), remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), remotely
piloted vehicle (RPV), and autonomous aerial vehicle. The innovations of the
6 A. Szabó
last few years let this technology become so popular today. For hobbies through
commercial and governmental entities all the way up to the military.
The driving force behind this technology was originally the military,
similarly to other inventions in the field of telecommunication and computer
science. This technology is getting into our everyday life so suddenly and
drastically, like the Internet and the mobile communication several years ago.
Those caused major changes in the economy, scientific world, culture,
education and most importantly transformed our social life. The question is
what these unmanned devices will cause in the history of mankind. The global
term for these devices is Cyber-Physical Systems, which describe the fact that
they exist and act in both dimensions. The technical and legal backgrounds
haven't been established yet, as it is still an emerging technology.
From the security perspective the drones are rising threats and unused
opportunities in the same time. We have heard notable cases (drone crashes1 2,
jamming incident3, counter operations in conflicts4 5, football hooliganism6,
drug smuggling7) in the news which prove that unaware hobbyist, criminals,
malicious users and even state-actors recognized the possibilities of this
technology.
1
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/man-arrested-for-landing-radioactive-drone-on-
japanese-prime-ministers-roof-10203517.html
2
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/drone-crashes/database/
3
Source: http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/140586
4
Source: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ukraine-scrambles-for-uavs-but-russian-drones-own-the-skies-
74f5007183a2
5
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-22/ukraines-diy-drone-war/6401688
6
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29624259
7
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30932395
8
like pilots have blinded by lasers or other light source
9
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/06/us/drones-sports-events/
http://www.droneinjurieslawyer.com/read-me/ http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921504
GRaTe-BED for Evaluating the Communication Link of Unmanned Aerial Systems 7
too. It is quite contradictory, that micro UAS are publicly available for a low
price, but security of the used communication standards, and the possible counter-
UAS techniques are not well known. Law enforcement and security agencies
need counter-UAS techniques [4], which are still available on the market
(solutions for detecting10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and for detecting and countering15, 16. These
governmental entities are in a difficult position because these countermeasures
usually haven’t been inspected by independent test facilities and the results aren’t
available publicly (which is understandable regarding the sensitive nature of these
countermeasures). Both the effectiveness and the limits have to be analyzed to
ensure proper counter-UAS capability and to minimize unneeded interference
with legitimate spectrum users (to decrease the footprint of the equipment only to
that location which has to be secured). Test procedures have to be defined and
made publicly available to standardize the requirements. It is also a challenge to
navigate in the field of UAS technology, where there are multiple companies on
the drone market with wide portfolio, several frequency ranges (usually 72 MHz,
433 MHz, 915 MHz, 2,4 GHz for control 900 MHz, 1,2 GHz, 2,4 GHz or 5,8
GHz for payload communication), and different protocols (Wifi, 3DR, MAVlink,
etc.) for the control channel. In [5] researchers highlighted the lack of
standardized protocols for civil UAS control communication. So we have to
evaluate devices with different kind of RF parameters, and various proprietary, or
open source upper layer protocols.
10
SHARPEYETM SxV RADAR TECHNOLOGY https://www.kelvinhughes.com/security/uav-drone-
detection
11
ARRIER DSR-200 Drone Surveillance Radar
http://www.detect-inc.com/DeTect%20-%20Security/TDS%20-
%20HARRIER%20DSR%20200d%20150406US.pdf
12
Army Tests New Acoustic Threat Detection System http://defensetech.org/2015/05/20/army-tests-new-
acoustic-threat-detection-system/
13
DroneTracker
http://www.dedrone.com/en/dronetracker/drone-detection-hardware
14
Domestic Drone Countermeasures http://www.ddcountermeasures.com/
15
Anti-UAV Defence System (AUDS) http://www.securitynewsdesk.com/?post_type=post&p=50833
16
Falcon Shield
http://www.janes.com/article/54319/dsei-2015-selex-es-unveils-falcon-shield-counter-uav-system
17
MAVLink micro air vehicle marshalling / communication library https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink
18
MAVLINK Common Message Set https://pixhawk.ethz.ch/mavlink/
8 A. Szabó
4. Previous Work
UAS technology is a hot research topic nowadays, there are several
publications related to my field of interest. In [9], [10] authors highlighted the
importance of robust communication between the UAV and the ground control
station, which means that we have to test these UA in a possible not-
cooperative/hostile EM environment (to be prepared to the unintentionally
hazardous or hostile situations) and also develop suitable response to aerial
terrorist attacks (especially which conducted with commercial UAS [10]. In
spite of the high proliferation of mini UAV systems, there are only a few
recommendations about testing the DUT as a hardware in the loop [11],
evaluate its communication [7], [12] or analyze the performance of the
sensor/payload systems [13]. Engineers are focusing on the vulnerability of the
communication link against unintentional interference [14] or adversaries with
RF jamming capabilities [15], the cyber exploitation of these devices are also a
hot topic [16]. However, very few of the before-mentioned papers try to
understand the threat against UAS, or attempt to manage this problem in holistic
point of view. In fact the security of these cyber-physical devices has to be
GRaTe-BED for Evaluating the Communication Link of Unmanned Aerial Systems 9
19
Layer 1 35.100: Open systems interconnection (OSI) Source:
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_ics_browse.htm?ICS1=35&ICS2=100
10 A. Szabó
5. Methodology
Design considerations
In the following I will present the main features which I had to consider
during my research.
SDR platform
SDR solves the flexibility needs by converting most of the PHY layer signal
processing blocks into a software layer. This method not only simplifies design
and implementation of advanced radio system, but it also made new approaches
possible. SDR receivers, transceivers can be deployed in different locations,
multiple radios can be organized into a network (see Fig. 1), to mention a few
novel features. This technology simplifies RF testing, by transforming
measurement into scriptable steps. Multiple scenarios can be tested and
validated, minimizing the human error (measurement errors). The repeatable
steps can be automatized but the design of the scenario and the analysis of the
final results should done by engineers. It’s important to mention that the testbed
can’t operate without human interaction.
For the hardware part of the testbed I used USRP N200 with
UHD_003.005.005 driver, usrp_n200 firmware and usrp_n200_r4 FPGA image
(openly available from ettus.com), the software component was GNU radio
(Version 3.7.2.1). There are several simulation platforms which would have
been utilized for this project (for example Labview, Matlab and Simulink). My
choice was Gnu Radio. The reasons behind this decision were my previous
experience with this tool, and also to make the results publicly, and freely
available for other researchers. The hardware parameters are well documented
(for us it’s important that maximum output power is between 17-20 dBm,
usable between 400 to 4400 MHz with SBXv3, and 68.75 to 2200 MHz with
WBXv3 frontend boards [21]).
USRP hardware can work both with command line tools like (UHD_FFT,
UHD_SIGGEN) or graphical interface of the GNU Radio Companion. Both
have advantages and some drawbacks as well.
To automate different scenarios cli tools are useful, because they can be
organized and executed in a script, without user interaction (besides that usually
users triggers the start and check the integrity of the output).
On the other hand if the analysis needs human interaction, the results are not
predictable, then it is recommended to conduct the evaluation under supervision
of a human operator.
GRaTe-BED for Evaluating the Communication Link of Unmanned Aerial Systems 11
Figure 2: Flowgraph of the jammer in GNU Radio (left), with the constellation
diagram of the output (right)
To organize the graphical interface we can choose from a notebook view
(different graphical elements are on different “pages”) or we can create only one
“common View”, and we can orient different elements with a Grid Position
parameter. I find it much handier to organize into a notebook view then to a
complex diagram.
At the jammer node similarly pre-programed steps like scripts using
uhd_siggen (Fig. 3) or interactive user control with uhd_siggen_gui can be
utilized (as a signal generator it can create basic signals sine, sweep, square,
noise). If we are using GNU Radio Companion then we can use virtual
measurement devices (spectrum analyzer, waterfall display, oscilloscope,
histogram view, constellation diagram, etc.) to monitor the state of the flow
graph. On the other hand the output should be inspected with external device (to
check that the SDR generating the predefined signals with the allowed power).
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Figure 3: DJI Phantom 2 vision control channel (1) with a pulsed jammer signal
(2) generated with uhd_siggen script
Threat library
The effectiveness of the testbed is highly dependent on the interference/jam
library, and the topology represented by the scenario. The utilized error
detection/correction algorithms, media access schema, the channel coding made
sophisticated RF standards cause that the effectiveness of the jammer signal is
difficult to represent with mathematical models. Likewise in [22] the author
mentioned the difficulties of simulating complex Electronic Warfare systems to
measure the effectiveness. In this case SDRs can solve the problem by
interconnecting the simulation and the real world RF measurements.
Unknown RF standards can be observed in a black box approach, with
replaying signals we can spoof pre-recorded control signals and analyze the
system responses [23]. For the “replay attack” (Fig. 4) we can save multiple
different samples, and replay them in different orders, but it can increase the
complexity of the software if we do not merge these samples.
GRaTe-BED for Evaluating the Communication Link of Unmanned Aerial Systems 13
Channel modeling
Author in [24] compared the possibilities for channel simulation in GNU
Radio. With these models we can introduce different channel degradation
effects (multipath, frequency selective fading, etc.) to observe the DUT
response to the possible RF anomalies (not only the Transmitter but also the
jammer performance can be degraded by environmental conditions).
Networking
While creating a high density SDR network array we have to consider the
difficulties caused by multiple measurement device sets to high sampling rate
(like 100 Msamp/sec with 20 MHz RF bandwidth) [25].
USRP N200 has Gigabit Ethernet network interface, supporting IPv4, and
only the IP address can be changed (not even the netmask). So theoretically the
maximum number of sensors in the network is 254 (because USRP doesn't
support routing, so we can’t create a routed topology).
Sampling rate is a critical parameter to the network load (Fig. 5), and the
proper configuration of the TCP/IP stack is also vital [26].
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Figure 5: Network load in Wireshark IO Graph (the network traffic of uhd_fft was
monitored)
The first 30 sec. uhd_fft was configured to sample 10 Msps, than 30 sec. with
only 1 Msps.
RF Navigation
Global (like GPS, GNSS, etc.) or autonomous [9] radio navigation systems
are commonly used in UAS for the autopilot system, and also have important
role in remotely operated device in “link lost” situations. Likewise, these
technologies can be tested on SDR platform [27]
Test scenario building
It’s a mandatory requirement for T&E equipment to perform in a repeatable,
flexible way and to be able to adapt to new technologies (like new protocols). In
GNU radio basic signal processing blocks are available (modulators,
demodulators, filters, etc.), if a new / special purposed processing function is
GRaTe-BED for Evaluating the Communication Link of Unmanned Aerial Systems 15
20
http://cgran.org/
21
more details can be found at https://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/OutOfTreeModules
16 A. Szabó
Future plans
- Creating a database back-end to manage the measurement and to store the
results;
- Testing with different UAS;
- Expanding the RF spectrum (the current hardware can analyze up to 4,4 GHz,
with down converters it is possible to analyze upper portion of the spectrum);
- Analyzing RF immunity and interference in UAS swarming operations.
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