The team he leads in 2021 Zach at the checkoutThe director of The Ohio State University’s Autonomous Systems Perception, Intelligence and Navigation (ASPIN) Laboratory showed what it might be like to electronically eavesdrop on signals from six Starlink satellites. pinpoint locations On Earth to an accuracy of 8 meters – although this required 13 minutes of tracking rather than instant results.
Such opportunistic eavesdropping is difficult, Kassas explained, because Starlink optimizes for basic satellite Internet service by switching beams on and off, or sometimes changing beams as fast-moving satellites talk to many different users. This creates unexpected jumps in the signal time estimates that researchers rely on to calculate location data.
To overcome these problems, Kassas and his colleagues use Doppler measurements of signal frequency changes, which reflect satellite movements relative to the receiver, and software algorithms to correct for timing errors. They also combined phased-array antennas that can communicate with one or two satellites at a time, with low-gain omnidirectional antennas that can receive signals from up to 10 satellites at once. By 2025, researchers have shown how to use signals from an average of three Starlink satellites. provides placement results to an accuracy of 2 meters in just 20 seconds.
But this general eavesdropping strategy is not limited to Starlink’s thousands of satellites, they have also used satellite signals from Orbcomm, Iridium, Starlink, OneWeb, NOAA and the special PNT constellation Xona. “I’m not really married to Starlink — I love it all,” Kassas said.
The team has demonstrated this alternative navigation solution with ground vehicles, a high-altitude balloon, and a drone. One of the latest experiments showed how the exploitation of signals from both Starlink and OneWeb satellites could be improved. ship navigation accuracy On the west coast of Greenland in the Arctic, this technique can work almost anywhere on Earth.
All of this means that people won’t have to wait much longer for new GPS alternatives, whether they come directly from Starlink or third parties. Kassas and his team have already licensed their technology to some organizations. “I think people are hungry and suffering when they don’t have GPS or GNSS, and they want these solutions,” Kassas told Ars.
