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posted by chromas on Thursday September 30 2021, @01:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the its-good-to-know-where-you-are dept.

Researchers use Starlink satellites to pinpoint location, similar to GPS:

Researchers track six satellites to get location with accuracy of eight meters.

Signals from SpaceX Starlink broadband satellites can be used to pinpoint locations on Earth to within eight meters of accuracy, engineering researchers reported in a new peer-reviewed paper. Their report is part of a growing body of research into using signals from low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites for navigation, similar to how GPS works.

Kassas said his "team has used similar techniques with other low-Earth orbit satellite constellations, but with less accuracy, pinpointing locations within about 23 meters," according to the Ohio State News article.

SpaceX satellite signals used like GPS to pinpoint location on Earth

Researchers find novel way to use Starlink system

Engineering researchers have developed a method to use signals broadcast by Starlink internet service satellites to accurately locate a position here on Earth, much like GPS does. It is the first time the Starlink system has been harnessed by researchers outside SpaceX for navigation.

[....] Their findings, shared today (Sept. 22, 2021) at the Institute of Navigation GNSS annual meeting in St. Louis, may provide a promising alternative to GPS. Their results will be published in the upcoming issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.

The researchers did not need assistance from SpaceX to use the satellite signals, and they emphasized that they had no access to the actual data being sent through the satellites – only to information related to the satellite’s location and movement.

Foreign adversaries who cannot launch their own global navigation satellites might find this as a "poor man's" alternative.

Journal Reference:
Zaher Zak Kassas, Joe Khalife, Mohammad Neinavaie. The First Carrier Phase Tracking and Positioning Results with Starlink LEO Satellite Signals, IEEE (DOI: 10.1109/TAES.2021.3113880)


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday September 30 2021, @01:49AM (6 children)

    by looorg (578) on Thursday September 30 2021, @01:49AM (#1183005)

    Foreign adversaries who cannot launch their own global navigation satellites might find this as a "poor man's" alternative.

    Possibly during peace, assuming friendly relationship with the USA, time but not when they might actually need or want it. Not like Uncle Sam would allow Musk to provide aid to the enemy in a time of war. There better be a kill switch there or his satellites might have some kind of unfortunate accident and start falling out of the sky. Possibly some legal clause so they can terminate service whenever they like for whatever reason they might give. There is a reason the potential enemies have their own systems to use or backup to whenever they want to.

    Also they can't probably be to accurate either. Not with the any useful level of accuracy at least. That said within 23 meters is good enough for a warhead or a very large, or decent sized, bomb.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @02:12AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @02:12AM (#1183008)

      There better be a kill switch there or his satellites might have some kind of unfortunate accident and start falling out of the sky.

      I'm not sure you understand how satellites work. There's some magical big red button that you can press and hundreds and hundreds of satellites will "fall out of the sky"?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @03:20AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @03:20AM (#1183016)

        Really??? Jyst tie a Kerr loop oyt of sybstring material. It is not difficylt for anyone that knows what they are doing.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @11:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @11:08AM (#1183077)

      Also they can't probably be to accurate either. Not with the any useful level of accuracy at least. That said within 23 meters is good enough for a warhead or a very large, or decent sized, bomb.

      Thanks for not even reading The Fine Summary. If by "can't probably" you mean "are" and the two following sentences being oxymoronic and the subject being non-Starlink satellites instead of Starlink, then you are 100% correct. The 23 meters is about using non-Starlink satellites,

      team has used similar techniques with other low-Earth orbit satellite constellations, but with less accuracy, pinpointing locations within about 23 meters

      With Starlink you get at present 8m accuracy as per the research article. With more Starlinks being launched, it will probably be more accurate going forward.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday September 30 2021, @12:26PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday September 30 2021, @12:26PM (#1183090) Homepage
      "The researchers used signals from six Starlink satellites to pinpoint a location on Earth within 8 meters of accuracy."

      That's not much worse than on-paper civilian GPS managed, and about equal to what I see in practice.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 30 2021, @03:05PM (1 child)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 30 2021, @03:05PM (#1183108) Journal

      Not like Uncle Sam would allow Musk to provide aid to the enemy in a time of war. There better be a kill switch

      You know what is much more gooder than a kill switch?

      A way to tweak signals so that the satellites deliberately mislead an adversary's position information. What's more worser than if an enemy target is mist? Suppose your weapon hits a friendly target instead of an enemy target.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by dwilson on Thursday September 30 2021, @08:26PM

        by dwilson (2599) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 30 2021, @08:26PM (#1183187) Journal

        You know what is much more gooder than a kill switch?

        A way to tweak signals so that the satellites deliberately mislead an adversary's position information.

        They tried that [wikipedia.org]. Unsurprisingly, the market worked around it. DGPS reached such a high level of accuracy that SA was recognized as being pointless, and was turned off.

        I use free, non-subscription DGPS systems regularly, and they're accurate to within a foot or less, though I admit it tends to drift occasionally and requires monitoring and manual intervention at times. I even use a subscription DGPS service, and it's accurate to within a few inches. It 'Just works'.

        I'm not saying it things couldn't be 'tweaked', as you put it, in such a way as to render an introduced error non-correctable, but at this point what's the point? We've got GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, with even more commercial satellites and land-based systems augmenting those, which we collectively call DGPS.

        Why worry about an 'enemy' using a Starlink positioner against you? They've got so many other options.

        --
        - D
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @11:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @11:58AM (#1183342)

    23 meters is pinpoint accuracy?

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