Citation: Gu, N.; Xing, F.; You, Z.
Visual/Inertial/GNSS Integrated
Navigation System under GNSS
Spoofing Attack. Remote Sens. 2022,
14, 5975. https://doi.org/10.3390/
rs14235975
Academic Editors: Yangquan Chen,
Subhas Mukhopadhyay,
Nunzio Cennamo, M. Jamal Deen,
Junseop Lee and Simone Morais
Received: 9 October 2022
Accepted: 23 November 2022
Published: 25 November 2022
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Article
Visual/Inertial/GNSS Integrated Navigation System under GNSS
Spoofing Attack
Nianzu Gu
1,2
, Fei Xing
2,
* and Zheng You
2,3
1
Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Tsinghua University,
Beijing 100084, China
3
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Integrated Circuits, Beijing 100084, China
* Correspondence: xingfei@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn; Tel.: +86-10-62776000
Abstract:
Visual/Inertial/GNSS (VIG) integrated navigation and positioning systems are widely used
in unmanned vehicles and other systems. This VIG system is vulnerable to of GNSS spoofing attacks.
Relevant research on the harm that spoofing causes to the system and performance analyses of VIG
systems under GNSS spoofing are not sufficient. In this paper, an open-source VIG algorithm, VINS-
Fusion, based on nonlinear optimization, is used to analyze the performance of the VIG system under
a GNSS spoofing attack. The influence of the visual inertial odometer (VIO) scale estimation error
and the transformation matrix deviation in the transition period of spoofing detection is analyzed.
Deviation correction methods based on the GNSS-assisted scale compensation coefficient estimation
method and optimal pose transformation matrix selection are proposed for VIG-integrated system
in spoofing areas. For an area that the integrated system can revisit many times, a global pose
map-matching method is proposed. An outfield experiment with a GNSS spoofing attack is carried
out in this paper. The experiment result shows that, even if the GNSS measurements are seriously
affected by the spoofing, the integrated system still can run independently, following the preset
waypoint. The scale compensation coefficient estimation method, the optimal pose transformation
matrix selection method and the global pose map-matching method can depress the estimation error
under the circumstances of a spoofing attack.
Keywords:
GNSS spoofing; visual/inertial/GNSS integrated system; scale estimation; global pose
map matching; GNSS spoofing experiment
1. Introduction
Positioning and navigation are basic problems in the autonomous operation of un-
manned ground vehicles (UGVs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other intelligent
systems. Positioning and navigation technology is an ancient and modern technology.
With the development of sensor technology, a variety of navigation sensors with different
physical principles have been utilized. One of the most important reasons that there are
so many kinds of navigation sensors is that each kind of navigation sensor has particular
technical advantages and disadvantages, so it is often necessary to combine different kinds
of sensors to achieve complementary advantages. With the gradual maturity of each kind
of navigation sensor technology and the reduction in costs, intelligent systems such as
UVs and UAVs are often equipped with various navigation sensors to form integrated
navigation and positioning systems. The most commonly used positioning and naviga-
tion technologies mainly include the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Inertial
Navigation System (INS) [
1
], etc. With the development of computer vision, visual Simulta-
neous Localization Additionally, Mapping (SLAM) technology has gradually become an
important positioning and navigation technology for intelligent systems [2].
GNSS is still the most important absolute positioning technology. The main advantage
of GNSS systems is that they provide all-weather, high-precision, high-stability positioning
Remote Sens. 2022, 14, 5975. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14235975 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing
