Spirent Communications announced it has partnered with the European Space Agency (ESA) to lead an initiative aimed at increasing the resilience of Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems used in Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). The initiative will see Spirent and partners deliver a comprehensive test framework designed to drive measurable resilience in PNT systems for users, operators and providers of CNI in the United Kingdom. The new initiative, supported by Element 2 of ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP), is designed to raise awareness and improve resilient PNT test and assessment by providing a pathway to assess, validate and rate PNT equipment and services used in critical national infrastructure.
With the 2023 UK Government report The Economic Impact on the UK of a Disruption to GNSS estimating a 7-day GNSS outage could cost the UK economy PS7.6 billion, the importance of the new initiative is clear, with CNI heavily dependent on satellite-based PNT systems and data. The new initiative will support the UK Government’s Resilient PNT Strategy by enabling access to rigorous, quantitative test evidence and operational insights that help evaluate and validate PNT systems across essential sectors. It will comprise three core components: Spirent PNT Alliance – bringing together companies, academic research partners, and PNT professional and government bodies to identify, develop and cater resilience services for CNI.
PNT Shopfront – showcasing solutions that aid the adoption of resilient PNT and help to assure regulatory compliance for critical PNT dependencies. PNT Resiliency Health Check – to enable independent appraisal of GNSS equipment capability against general performance, resilience, and security criteria. The Spirent PNT Alliance will include the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) and other strategic partners to complement their activities and help build a resilient PNT ecosystem in the UK by commercializing best practices and connecting CNI operators with new technologies and test approaches.
The annual PNT Health Check assessments will help organizations understand their dependencies, identify vulnerabilities, and track improvements over time, with a technical framework that scores resilience against standard benchmarks to create a pathway toward industry-wide test methodologies.