New Maritime Navigation Aid Enhances Situational Awareness Under GNSS Disruption

A new maritime-security solution, PntGuard™, has been commercially launched by Tschudi Shipping Company, NAL Research, and SGM Technology AS, providing accurate situational awareness and ensuring navigational integrity for vessels when GNSS signals are compromised.

PntGuard is a standalone navigational aid, independent of other bridge systems and designed to deliver instant alerts whenever a vessel’s position is falsified. It provides the vessel’s true location even when other navigation systems are disrupted.

The solution addresses the growing problem of GNSS/GPS signal disruption, which can originate from land-based systems, hostile vessels, or opportunistically in congested sea lanes.

This interference is now recognized as a strategic threat with the potential to cause serious physical, commercial, and legal damage, as attackers can corrupt GNSS/GPS signals to place a ship miles from its actual location, fabricate AIS tracks, and trigger cascading errors across bridge systems.

The disruption amplifies the risk of critical scenarios including collisions, groundings, unintended entry into restricted waters, claims of sanctions evasion, port delays, and charter disputes.

The PntGuard leverages Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (APNT) technology. While most current solutions only warn of GNSS/GPS disruption, PntGuard provides an alternative authenticated, trusted position.

It is enabled by the Iridium® low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network, receiving a secured PNT signal that is about 1,000 times more powerful than GNSS/GPS and is resilient to jamming and spoofing. This complements a vessel’s navigation feed with accurate situational awareness and immediately alerts the crew to manipulation or interruption.

The system is easy to install, comprising two compact components. An above-deck unit (receiver) connects to the Iridium PNT service, while a below-deck unit (bridge display) shows both the falsified GPS track and the vessel’s true position on a nautical chart in real time.

PntGuard provides a single point of truth, allowing crews to react rapidly and continue to navigate with confidence, as most crews would otherwise not know they are being spoofed until it is too late.

Shore offices can also receive an accurate record of a vessel’s true position at any time. This proof can be shared with charterers or insurers to defend against claims based on false data, thereby safeguarding revenue and reputation.

The technology is built on the same foundation that enables APNT solutions for various aspects of critical infrastructure, including telecommunications networks, data centers, and utilities.

Its maritime performance was validated through multi-month sea trials with international shipowners, a proof-of-concept pilot with Norway’s DNK, and independent evaluations at Jammertest, Andøya, for two consecutive years. PntGuard is available for deployment today, scaled to fleet size.