On Detecting GPS Spoofing Attack in Flying Ad-hoc Networks: A Comparative Study

Flying Ad-hoc Network (FANET) refers to a group of Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs) connected in an Ad-hoc manner to accomplish common missions. FANETs cannot employ algorithms requiring complex computations and storage due to the limited computational power, smaller memory size, and shorter battery life of the UAVs. As the UAVs in FANETs rely on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for their operation, they are targeted by various cyber-attacks. The civilian GPS signals are not encrypted; hence, they can be easily spoofed by malicious attackers. The UAVs may deviate from their path to the attacker's intended destination by counterfeit GPS signals. The result of such attacks can be drastic; leading the UAVs to collide or hijack. Detection and mitigation of GPS Spoofing attacks in FANETs are challenging due to the unique features of the UAVs like high-mobility, topology variations, and resource constraints. To address the aforementioned research challenges, this paper discusses various detection mechanisms for GPS Spoofing attacks in the UAV environment and provides a comparative analysis among them. The comparative analysis focuses on how these challenges have been addressed in the existing literature. The results of this study indicate that the research works on addressing GPS Spoofing attacks in FANETs are still immature and require more future research efforts. Most of the previous research works have not considered the unique characteristics of FANETs and the used performance evaluation methods and metrics do not reflect the real-world scenarios of FANETs.