"Illinois Tech's CARNATIONS Receives $10M Federal Grant as New Tier 1 Transportation Center to Bolster Cybersecurity in Navigation Systems"
The US Department of Transportation has designated the Center for Assured and Resilient Navigation in Advanced Transportation Systems (CARNATIONS) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) as a Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC). As a Tier 1 UTC, CARNATIONS will receive a $10 million grant for increasing the resilience of transportation navigation systems against cyberattacks such as spoofing and jamming. CARNATIONS, a consortium of universities led by Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Boris Pervan, conducts transformative research in resilient transportation systems, facilitates technology transfer to public agencies and industry, and advances workforce and educational development. Interference, such as jamming and spoofing, that targets critical infrastructure can cause delays and cascading failures across multiple modes of transportation. For example, a major aircraft manufacturer reported over 10,000 Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference events in 2021 alone, and repeated spoofing attacks have negatively impacted various military operations. Pervan and his team plan to approach the problem from different angles, including developing sophisticated algorithms that can distinguish between authentic and spoofed GPS signals and improving GPS receivers by combining them with other types of sensors resistant to jamming and spoofing. CARNATIONS will consider the possibility of a fully connected system in the future, in which self-driving cars exchange information with each other and with smart infrastructure such as traffic signals. This article continues to discuss CARNATIONS and its goal to enhance the resilience of transportation infrastructure against cyber threats.