Jack Loughran Fri 5 Dec 2025
Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/12/05/leo-signals-starlink-and-oneweb-offer-stronger-more-reliable-substitute-gps
Signals from satellite broadband services such as Starlink or OneWeb can be repurposed as an alternative to GPS navigation, researchers have demonstrated.
GPS is an essential tool that is used in many sectors, including defence, shipping and aviation, but it is highly susceptible to attack; disruptions such as GPS jamming and spoofing have increased globally in recent years. According to the International Air Transport Association, the number of GPS signal loss events in aviation increased by 220% between 2021 and 2024.
Now, researchers from Ohio State University have shown that signals from satellites in the Starlink and OneWeb constellations, which operate in a low-Earth orbit (LEO), could be used to improve ship navigation accuracy in the Arctic – an area where GPS coverage and signals are typically degraded. In a study, they found that combining LEO signals with height data from a ship sailing off the west coast of Greenland significantly increased navigation accuracy, effectively reducing errors from more than a kilometre (without GPS) to 27 metres.
Professor Zak Kassas, co-author of the study, said: “When you lose GPS on a plane or a ship there is no solution at the time being. What we showed is that there are solutions ready to be deployed in the field with existing systems.”
The team had already carried out a project that used Starlink signals for positioning; efforts to scale up that research saw the inclusion of ground receivers in the navigation system that can passively listen to frequencies emitted from multiple LEO satellite constellations. These have now been tested successfully in several scenarios, including in a moving vehicle and an extremely high-altitude balloon.
In this experiment, they decided to test their work in the Arctic because OneWeb’s 600 satellites are plentiful near the north and south poles, while Starlink’s more than 7,000 satellites are present across all other latitudes.
“We can be smart about what we have already in the environment and use it to navigate,” said Kassas. “Ambient signals, whether they are terrestrial or non-terrestrial (such as LEO), are extremely useful for navigation if you know how to use them.”
The researchers said they did not need assistance from the satellite operators (SpaceX and Eutelsat) to use the signals, and emphasised that they had no access to the actual data being sent through the satellites – only to publicly available information related to the satellites’ downlink transmission frequency, and a rough estimate of the satellites’ location.
According to the study, these results could have significant implications for aerospace and defence because signals from LEO satellites are thousands of times more powerful than GPS and are therefore much more difficult to disrupt.
“If someone wants to interfere with LEO signals, they would have to put more effort into it,” said Kassas. “Those cyberattacks on GPS are becoming the bread and butter of electronic warfare, and it’s spilling over to civilian systems. Our approach is economical, alleviating the need to build and operate new dedicated navigation systems, and sustainable, preserving the scarce spectrum and our space environment, so we believe it will be integrated into future navigation systems.”
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