Not Only Internet, Starlink Can Now Be Used Like GPS

Signals from SpaceX Starlink satellites can be used like GPS to pinpoint locations on Earth to within 8 meters of accuracy.
A group of researchers from Ohio State University (OSU) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) have devised a method for using Starlinks networked satellites as a basic navigation aid.
Engineering experts claimed in a new peer-reviewed study that signals from SpaceX Starlink broadband satellites might be utilized to locate places on Earth to within 8 meters of precision.
Their findings are part of a growing corpus of research on utilizing signals from low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for navigation, much like GPS.
"We eavesdropped on the signal, and then we designed sophisticated algorithms to pinpoint our location, and we showed that it works with great accuracy," Zak Kassas, the director of CARMEN (Center for Automated Vehicle Research with Multimodal AssurEd Navigation), a US Department of Transportation-funded center at Ohio State University, said in the article.
There are already alternatives to GPS, but Dr. Zak Kassas and his team decided to see if he could use a different technique that was never expressly intended for navigational purposes, SpaceX’ Starlink.
Currently, Starlink has approximately 1,700 satellites orbiting the Earth attempting to provide broadband internet anywhere in the world.
The researchers' paper said that "various theoretical and experimental studies" have considered the possibility of using "signals of opportunity" from LEO broadband satellites for navigation.
"Signals from LEO SVs are received with higher power compared to medium Earth orbit (MEO) where GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System] SVs reside.
The researchers previously considered a cognitive approach to tracking the Doppler frequency of unknown LEO SV signals but said in their most recent paper that this method "cannot estimate the carrier phase, nor can it be adopted here since it requires knowledge of the period of the beacon within the transmitted signal, which is unknown in the case of Starlink LEO SVs."
The researchers recorded Starlink signals for 800 seconds or about 13.3 minutes.
Researchers in Dr. Kassas' group were able to geographically locate an antenna receiver within 7.7 meters of its real location using signal strength, information from the satellites themselves, and estimations of the orbital position of those satellites.
However, the technique utilized only six Starlink satellites for its positioning, and with the increasing number of satellites in orbit, Dr. Kassas expects that accuracy level to increase dramatically.
We have just discussed in detail a path with which it may be possible for researchers to build a GPS competitor out of Starlink’s systems.
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