Your mobile phone likely still gets its connectivity from a 4G cellular network—but the transition to 5G networks is well underway. It will bring many benefits, but there is also a concern: those benefits will create more demand for, and reliance on, the Global Positioning System (GPS).

To address these concerns, DHS has funded a research project at Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Its objective is to mitigate the risk created by 5G’s ever-increasing dependence on GPS.

In addition to providing location information for things like car navigation systems, GPS also provides timing information to enable precise time synchronization for many kinds of critical infrastructure. For the 5G network, that timing information is critical. It is used to synchronize activities across a huge network of components, which would be thrown into disarray if the GPS system were disabled or disrupted. And because 5G offers increased data speeds relative to 4G, it requires even greater timing synchronization speed, accuracy, and resiliency—exacerbating the risk.

“5G almost exponentially expands the speed, capacity, reliability, and accessibility of all things wireless,” explains Scott Sotebeer, who is the founder and CEO of USA Strategics and an investigator on the new CIRI project. “And in that expansion and growth, there is more dependency and therefore increasing vulnerability when everything revolves around GPS. Timing is the cornerstone. Reliable timing backup is critical going into the future.”

The core problem is that there is not currently a backup timing system that’s fully ready to step in on a national basis if GPS has a problem.

“Our whole constellation of 32 [GPS] satellites is roughly 12,500 miles out in space,” says Sotebeer. “So the signal is very, very weak when it reaches Earth. There are a lot of opportunities for interruption and disruption, either manmade or natural.” For example, a solar flare could disrupt GPS signals.

The CIRI project team will start by gathering and synthesizing information on the timing needs of 5G systems. They will then develop a timing strategy and a recommended testing and evaluation structure around the needs of carriers’ systems, pointing out the plusses and minuses of different alternative sources of timing information. Such sources might include, for example, low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites, or any of various terrestrial systems.

Sotebeer says he is confident that the project will bear real-world fruit because of the notably high level of interest in it from both the private sector and government. He attributes the momentum to the sincere determination of DHS and CIRI staff to step up and “get the work done” to address the timing signal challenge to enhance the resilience of key critical infrastructure systems.

The project’s Principal Investigator is Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, President of subcontractor Endicott Consulting, Inc. Barbara also holds appointments at Portland State University and Norwich University. Other team members are from USA Strategics and the University of Washington. The subawarded institutions include Endicott Consulting and Aegis Global. T-Mobile is on board as the initial carrier partner, and Bill Boni, T-Mobile’s former Senior Vice President Digital Security, will serve as a consultant.

In addition, various distinguished engineers and research professionals from the positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) industry are serving on the project’s Working Advisory Group.