Satellite Navigation & Sensing

Satellite-based navigation has impacted nearly every aspect of our modern society. Yet, this powerful technology relies on extremely low power, vulnerable signals traversing a vast space to reach receivers on the Earth surface or near-Earth space environments. Many complex elements interfere with the signals along their propagation path, including plasma in the upper atmosphere, water vapor in the lower troposphere, as well as physical objects and electromagnetic sources in the user environments. These nuisance factors degrade and limit navigation systems performance. Understanding their effects on navigation signals is the pre-requisite for developing robust navigation technologies that can mitigate these elements impact. Moreover, these effects enable satellite navigation signals to function as signals-of-opportunity for low cost, distributed, passive sensing of our space and local environments. This presentation will first discuss efforts in developing a worldwide network of software-defined sensors to capture and characterize the effects of the space and local environments on satellite navigation signals, followed by the latest technology development to mitigate these effects, and finally case studies demonstrating the potential powerful applications of the satellite navigation sensor network for environmental monitoring.