Today, many EU critical infrastructures, such as energy supply networks, transport infrastructures, telecommunications, and financial networks, have a strong reliance on Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) services, underpinned by the Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GNSS).
Given impact of a potential disruption of GNSS, an identification and characterisation of mature technologies that can provide position and/or timing services without dependency on GNSS is critical. Those are known as Alternative PNT (A-PNT).
 
Over eight months of testing activities, the selected A-PNT platforms were evaluated. Tested technologies provide a mix of terrestrial resilient time and frequency distribution - optical, electrical, and over-the-air (OTA), including 105 km OTA time transfer and LEO based services. Assured position was tested using a network of terrestrial transmitters and LEO. Given the technologies’ diversity, the test plans did not provide a common benchmarking but were agnostic, defined separately for each participant.
The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) addressed time generation (1, 14 or 100 days) and time and frequency distribution in the event of loss of GNSS. Static and kinematic positioning tests were also conducted in varied indoor and outdoor environments. Apart from quantitative tests, qualitative-based demonstrations of resilience to external threats, remote monitoring and related capacity of the platform were conducted.
 
An important outcome of this test campaign is the demonstration that the A-PNT platforms under evaluation can deliver positioning, and/or timing information independently from GNSS. This activity was conducted in the framework of a Call for Tender launched by DG DEFIS and was managed by JRC.