Tornado12
Second Officer
Flight distance : 356391 ft
United States
Offline
|
To my knowledge the satellite system that were "hacked" was not Glonass, which is Russias positioning and navigation system. So, the quick answer is that this has zero impact on your mavic 3.
Regarding how GPS works however, I can speak to that as I do have some knowledge of it. Ive been in and out of the radio communications hobby for over 25 years. I started in the hobby when I was just 12 years old. At 13 I had a desk in my bedroom full of radio communication equipment. CB base station, Shortwave radio's, Scanners, various walkie talkies, and was already wanting to get into HAM radio. I was a nerd. This was in the 1990's. GPS at that time was a new technology. I remember reading in my magazines that I had subscriptions to at the time about GPS Receivers. I eventually got on of those as well just as a toy. They were big bulky devices then. Needless to say I absorbed a lot of knowledge in those years as I found radio waves and communications fascinating.
To break down GPS in simple terms, think of it as little more than a radio station you can tune into in your car. For example lets use a made up "KISS 102.7 ROCK" as an example, which would be a radio station on the FM Dial at 102.7. The important part of this call sign that id like to point to is '102.7', which is the frequency, in megahertz (mhz), that the radio station broadcasts on. Any radio device that can tune into the frequency of 102.7mhz can listen to that radio station so long as they are in range of the tower that is broadcasting that signal. GNSS systems work very much this same way, except that the antenna broadcasting the signal is a group of satellites that are in earth orbit. The Various GPS Constellations (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, etc) broadcast in the frequency ranges of 1100-1500mhz. The drone receives signals from all of the constellations it is designed to receive from, all at the same time. Instead of Rock music however, the radio signals are reference points and data from the satellites that allows the GPS receiver to accurately pinpoint its location on earth. The receiver also downloads data about the current location in the sky of each satellite in the constellation, their trajectory of orbit etc.
Can a hacker interfere with this? Not on the receiving side. I saw someone above mention the signal being "intercepted" or "disrupted". You cant really "intercept" the signal. This is not like a wire connection you have with a satelite. Remember the satelites are like a radio station, they are simply broadcasting radio waves toward the earth, and everyone can tune in to the waves. It is like light from a light source. You can not intercept light. You can block it, just as you can radio waves, (which is why GPS doesnt work indoors) but you can not intercept the radio waves and somehow prevent someone else from receiving the signal. The only way to disrupt the GPS system would be to gain access to the internal system itself. The space agency that perhaps communicates and manages the constellation, if you got access to their internal system where you could then gain access to the satellites somehow, but there is no way really on the end user side to affect GPS. I guess you could theoretically design a jammer for the 1100, 1200, and 1500mhz frequency bands, but that is getting into the weeds of the issue. This is the elementary explanation of how GNSS works. |
|