What’s Ahead for PNT in 2025

By: Adam Price, VP of PNT Simulation, Spirent Communications

Predicting the future is one of the world’s oldest pastimes. But there’s a secret the best fortune-tellers have always known: it’s a lot easier to make good predictions when you have inside information—when you actually know what’s coming instead of having to guess.

In our role working with leading equipment manufacturers (OEMs), chipset makers, and others building tomorrow’s positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies, we tend to get an early preview of where the industry is heading next. Based on hundreds of engagements we conducted last year with stakeholders across the PNT value chain, here are the top trends we’ll be following in 2025.

NAVWAR Threats Grow Beyond the Battlefield

One of the biggest long-term developments we’ve been tracking is the growing use of GPS/GNSS jamming and spoofing as a feature of modern warfare. Combatants have employed such navigation warfare (NAVWAR) techniques around areas of conflict for several years, especially as uncrewed aircraft become more prevalent in both offensive and defensive military operations. Increasingly though, the effects of these techniques extend well outside of conflict zones, impacting civilian sectors too.

This trend presents a particularly urgent threat to civil and commercial aviation. A significant proportion of navigation and safety systems in modern aircraft now rely on accurate positioning data. If an airliner traverses an area where GPS/GNSS signals are jammed—or worse, where signals are spoofed to make navigation systems think the aircraft is in a different location—it can cause serious problems. Pilots and crews continually drill on operating aircraft when navigation systems are unavailable, so civil aviation has seen no serious safety incidents yet. But it’s now common for GPS/GNSS spoofing to affect more than 1,000 commercial flights per day, creating significant disruptions and costs.

NAVWAR problems aren’t limited to aviation. PNT technologies are now embedded in a vast range of devices and systems, from smartphones to energy grids and financial networks. So, GPS jamming and spoofing is now a real risk for a huge number of business-critical use cases as well. Expect more industry groups, governments, and regulators to shine a spotlight on these concerns in 2025.

Regulatory Frameworks Align

The risks associated with GPS/GNSS system vulnerabilities keep increasing. This year, expect more governments and regulators to evaluate increased regulation of PNT systems, especially in targeted industries and technologies, with the goal of improving reliability and strengthening defenses against signal interference threats.

Multiple national governments and industry groups are beginning to mandate baseline performance standards for PNT technologies, such as in China’s new automotive positioning GB/T. Regulators are also considering broadening existing standards, like RTCA DO-229, to address PNT threats in a wider range of sectors and applications. A cornerstone piece of this puzzle will be the integration and testing protocols that ensure systems meet stringent resilience benchmarks.

System Developers and Integrators Use More GPS Data

One of the main issues developers will face, in light of the increasing threats and regulatory pressures, is the need for new hardware to provide greater futureproofing. However, we expect to see something a little different.

Chipmakers have long been ahead of the curve in preparing for the future, and modern GPS/GNSS chipsets already provide a vast amount of information that could be used to improve system resilience. In 2025, look for more system developers and integrators to begin exploiting more of that data to help mitigate GPS/GNSS signal interference threats and unlock greater performance.

Developers and integrators are starting to read a broader set of GPS/GNSS data into their systems, and developing algorithms to make better use of it. For example, by comparing signal strength to the elevation angle of the transmitting satellite (data that many GPS chipsets already provide, even if it’s not always used), the system could detect a spoofing attack. As the security and regulatory landscape evolves, expect developers to pursue strategies like this to better utilize existing GPS/GNSS data to protect systems, even without needing advanced hardware like Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas (CRPAs) or secure signals like M-Code.

PNT Testing Shifts Left

The concept of “shifting left” has been a theme of DevOps software practices for years. By conducting testing activities earlier in development, developers aim to identify bugs sooner and accelerate software releases. This year, more chipmakers and OEMs will apply this approach to validating PNT systems, using software modeling to perform more expansive testing earlier in the development lifecycle.

Software model-based engineering offers significant advantages to chipset manufacturers in particular, though its benefits extend across the fast-moving PNT ecosystem. It is, of course, quicker and less expensive to test software models than physical prototypes. The more issues organizations can identify in early-stage testing, and the more changes they can evaluate via software, the fewer iterative hardware testing cycles they’ll need later on.

Developers can also explore a wider range of corner cases and other scenarios that PNT systems might encounter in live operation—a significant benefit as GPS/GNSS expands to more devices and more complex operating environments. Meanwhile, precise and realistic early-stage modeling provides the foundation for more efficient and effective RF testing later.