Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Security in Air Traffic Management

Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) has become the cornerstone of modern air traffic management, offering high-accuracy position reports transmitted directly by aircraft to controllers and other aircraft. Its open, unencrypted protocol delivers substantial benefits in surveillance coverage and cost efficiency, but it also exposes the system to a range of cyber-physical threats. Malicious actors can exploit the lack of built-in authentication to inject spurious messages, alter flight trajectories or deny service through jamming. Such vulnerabilities jeopardise safety and challenge the integrity of next-generation concepts, including four-dimensional trajectory management and unmanned aerial system integration. In response, research has diversified along two main axes: active detection of anomalous transmissions using signal-processing and machine-learning techniques, and the development of cryptographic and multilayer authentication frameworks that preserve the low-latency, low-bandwidth characteristics of ADS-B. Successful approaches combine physical-layer verification, such as received-signal-strength consistency checks, with lightweight signature schemes or multilateration cross-validation. These advances promise to reinforce the resilience of global airspace surveillance without undermining its operational simplicity.

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Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Security in Air Traffic Management publication trend

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Technical terms

ADS-B: A surveillance technology where aircraft broadcast their identity, position and velocity over an open radio channel.

Spoofing: The creation and transmission of falsified data to deceive receivers regarding an aircraft’s true state.

Jamming: Deliberate emission of interference on the ADS-B frequency to disrupt reception of legitimate messages.

Authentication: The process of verifying that a received message originates from a legitimate transmitter and has not been altered.

Multilateration: A technique that estimates an emitter’s position by measuring time differences of arrival at multiple geographically separated receivers.

Batch verification: A cryptographic method allowing simultaneous validation of multiple digital signatures to reduce processing time.

References

1. Security Issues in Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B): A Survey. IEEE Access (2020).
2. Cybersecurity Attacks on Software Logic and Error Handling Within ADS-B Implementations: Systematic Testing of Resilience and Countermeasures. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (2021).
3. Efficient anonymous authentication scheme for automatic dependent surveillance‐broadcast system with batch verification. IET Communications (2021).