In early November, Satelles’ STL solution was promoted in a FierceWireless article as a potential player in 5G to augment GPS. Excerpts from the article are below:
Last year, Iridium officially launched its Satellite Time and Location (STL) technology, enabling end users to access accurate navigation and timing anywhere on the planet, even indoors. The company says the unique architecture of its 66-low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation makes uniquely capable of this offering.
“The GPS clock is used for timing for traffic to be routed in telephony among the cellular providers and an application of 5G in microcells in buildings,” Fitzpatrick said. “They use the GPS clock for time sequencing and in urban canyons like this, the GPS signal doesn’t get into the building, so what you need to do is put an antenna on the roof and run cable” and the cellular providers don’t like that very much.
Iridium has been working with Satelles, to provide technology that would address the problem. Due to STL’s signal strength, it can help make GPS systems more difficult to “spoof,” which has been a growing problem n the GPS world.
The solution transmits its signals through Iridium’s satellite constellation to deliver a unique code to each position on the ground that can be independently authenticated, proving that a device is located in a specific place in the world, thereby enabling applications to be “location aware,” and allowing operation or access only if the user is in the location expected.
Link to Full Article, published by FierceWireless (Monica Alleven)
