Starlink Beacons for Passive LEO-Aided 9D Navigation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a hybrid navigation system combining GPS, Starlink beacons, and inertial sensors, demonstrating that Starlink Doppler-rate signals can enhance 9D navigation accuracy in GNSS-degraded environments.

Contribution

It introduces an end-to-end LEO-aided hybrid framework that fuses Starlink downlink beacons with GPS and inertial data for robust 9D navigation.

Findings

Starlink Doppler-rate signals provide valuable complementary PNT information.

The integrated system improves navigation accuracy when GNSS signals are degraded.

Simulation and hardware tests confirm the effectiveness of the Starlink-assisted navigation.

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) underpin positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT), yet their low-power signals are easily blocked or disrupted, leaving gaps in PNT availability in contested environments (e.g. maritime settings) where interference, spoofing, or denial can occur. A key practical need is an independent, ubiquitous aiding signal that can be tracked passively and fused with inertial sensing to sustain full navigation-state estimation without dedicated or cooperative infrastructure. This paper presents an end-to-end LEO-aided hybrid framework that fuses GPS, Starlink downlink beacons, and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) in a 9D (3D position, 3D velocity, and 3D attitude) PNT system using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). We (i) extract Doppler-rate from Starlink downlink beacon tones by associating measurements with satellite IDs, (ii) benchmark beacon Doppler-rate against OFDM-derived range observables under a common processing/estimation pipeline, and (iii) integrate the resulting observable into inertial navigation. We evaluate GPS/IMU, Starlink/IMU, and GPS-Starlink-IMU using Fisher-information predictions, Monte Carlo simulations, and hardware measurements. Results show that Starlink Doppler-rate provides meaningful complementary PNT information, and can aid 9D estimation when GNSS is degraded or intermittently unavailable.