GPS Alternative for Reentry

The Navy requires reentry bodies (RBs) which can maintain a position accuracy of better than 20 feet to support enhanced navigation, guidance, control and fuzing capability, especially in the final 4 minutes of endoatmospheric flight, to maintain superiority in our strategic stance. Precision navigation for most civilian and military systems over the past thirty years have leaned ever more on dedicated global navigation satellite services (GNSS) and most specifically on our own GPS constellation, to the point that far too many military systems are over reliant on the highly accurate but easy to deny signal. There is much current effort across the services to develop assured alternative sources and technologies for Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) for military platforms. Toyon proposes to use RF Signals of Opportunity (SoOp) from communications satellites such as SpaceX’s Starlink and Iridium NEXT exploited passively for PNT. In particular leveraging the mega-constellations of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) communications satellite signals which provide global coverage. Toyon proposes to employ novel signal processing techniques and a highly integrated anti-jam/beam-forming antenna design to acquire and track the signals through plasma and under the presence of jamming and spoofing.