GNSS Functional Safety for the Autonomous Vehicle

Emerging autonomous driving applications are setting the pace of the innovation for the on board GNSS receiver. Position accuracy, high availability, robustness of operation and formal integrity of the observables are the priorities, which are giving rise and shaping a new class of automotive receiver components and architectures. Moreover, because the autonomous driving and ADAS are safety critical, on top of previous requirements there is also the requirement for Functional Safety (informally called FuSa) compliancy. The documents codifying Functional Safety for automotive are the ISO26262 part 1 to part 11. The ISO26262 complements the well-known reliability automotive standard AEC-Q100. With respect to FuSa, a system can be defined as functionally safe if it always operates correctly and predictably. More importantly, in the event of failures, the system must remain safe for persons. Lastly also security is becoming a paramount and a new standard for cybersecurity in automotive, the ISO/SAE 21434, is in development where for a GNSS receiver this means robustness versus jamming, spoofing and meaconing attacks. This contribution introduces the functional safety and the security aspects of the new STMicroelectronics TeseoAPP (STA9100) GNSS receiver chipset.