March 3, 2026Open Access

Autonomous LEO-PNT System and Impact of Isoflux Navigation Antenna on Constellation

Key Points

The proposed LEO-PNT system shows enhanced signal robustness with an isoflux antenna designed for uniform ground coverage.
Increasing the antenna field-of-view from 80° to 120° reduces constellation size by a factor of five while providing four-fold coverage.
Assessment using an autonomous LEO satellite-based PNT system design highlights the role of redundant atomic clocks in navigation accuracy.
These findings suggest that optimized payload and antenna designs may enable more resilient and efficient satellite navigation systems.

Abstract

This work proposes an autonomous Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) system design independent of traditional GNSS infrastructure. The system features a compact navigation payload with redundant atomic clocks, a software-defined radio (SDR) for backhaul communications, and an isoflux-pattern antenna for uniform ground coverage and enhanced signal robustness. The results show that increasing antenna field-of-view (FoV) from 80 ◦ to 120 ◦ at 800 km altitude reduces the constellation size by a factor of five while maintaining four-fold global coverage. These findings suggest that optimized antenna and payload designs can enable cost-effective and resilient autonomous LEO-PNT capabilities.

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Cite This Study

Mayank et al. (Wed,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69a7673ebadf0bb9e87e026b https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2026.01.062

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