Starlink Beacons for Passive LEO-Aided 9D 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.