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Fall 2024 GRASP on Robotics: Zak Kassas, IEEE AESS DL & The Ohio State University, “Ad Astra: Navigation with Megaconstellation LEO Satellites”
October 18 @ 10:30 am - 11:45 am
This was a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance…
ABSTRACT
We are witnessing a space renaissance. Tens of thousands of broadband low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are expected to be launched by the end of this decade. These planned megaconstellations of LEO satellites along with existing constellations will shower the Earth with a plethora of signals of opportunity, diverse in frequency and direction. These signals could be exploited for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) in the inevitable event that global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals become unavailable (e.g., in deep urban canyons, under dense foliage, during unintentional interference, and intentional jamming) or untrustworthy (e.g., under malicious spoofing attacks).
This talk will overview the challenges associated with exploiting megaconstellation LEO satellites for PNT purposes, namely their unknown signals, poorly known ephemerides, loose synchronization and oscillator instability, and propagation effects. Next, a framework termed STAN: simultaneous tracking and navigation will be introduced to overcome these challenges. We will present an end-to-end approach, spanning theoretical modeling and analysis, specialized cognitive software-defined radio (SDR) design, practical PNT algorithms, and experimental demonstrations of STAN on the ground and aerial vehicles, navigating with multi-constellation LEO satellite signals (Starlink, OneWeb, Orbcomm, Iridium, and NOAA) to an unprecedented level of accuracy. Insights into future research directions and engineering implementation challenges will be provided as concluding remarks.
Presenter
Zak Kassas - Learn More
Zak Kassas is the TRC Endowed Chair in Intelligent Transportation Systems and a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University (OSU). He is the Director of the Autonomous Systems Perception, Intelligence, and Navigation (ASPIN) Laboratory. He is also the Director of the U.S. Department of Transportation Center: CARMEN (Center for Automated Vehicle Research with Multimodal AssurEd Navigation), focusing on navigation resiliency and security of highly automated transportation systems. He received a B.E. with Honors in Electrical Engineering from the Lebanese American University, an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The Ohio State University, and an M.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation (ION), and a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society. He was ranked by ScholarGPS as the top scholar in the world in the field of Navigation over the prior five-years. He authored more than 190 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, 12 magazine articles, 3 invited book chapters, and 21 U.S. patents. His awards include IEEE Walter Fried Award, IEEE Harry Rowe Mimno Award, ION Samuel Burka Award, ION Col. Thomas Thurlow Award, and 30+ best paper and paper presentation awards. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) YIP award. His students have won several awards, including three Best Ph.D. Dissertation awards (from IEEE, ION, OSU) and two US DOT Graduate Student of the Year awards.
He started his academic career in 2014 at the University of California, Riverside; then was an Associate Professor at University of California, Irvine; then was very early promoted to Full Professor and joined The Ohio State University in 2022. Since starting his academic career, his research has attracted more than $27 million in competitive federal grants from ONR, NSF, AFOSR, DOT, NIST, Sandia National Laboratories, the Aerospace Corporation, among others. His research was featured in dozens of national and international media outlets and appeared on 7 magazine covers. He has given 110+ invited presentations, keynotes, and plenaries, and served as a subject matter expert to DOD, GAO, DOT, and NSF.