skip to main content
10.1145/3625687.3625794acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessensysConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Global Localization of Energy-Constrained Miniature RF Emitters using Low Earth Orbit Satellites

Published: 26 April 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Daily tracking of small objects or animals anywhere on earth for long time-periods is a long sought-after goal. Recently, the emergence of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites offers a unique pathway to achieve this goal. However, to date, LEO trackers have not achieved cm-size. While the integrated chip can be readily scaled to sub-cm size, the size of trackers remains limited by their battery and antenna size. To address these two fundamental size limiting factors, this paper presents a LEO satellite localization system that is specifically optimized to reduce antenna size and transmit power, thereby reducing battery size. To reduce power, a new cooperative waveform is designed which enhances the localization accuracy, combined with an increased packet length to enable low transmit power while maintaining packet energy. However, this long packet length introduces a intra-packet Doppler shift which we address by proposing a localization algorithm that includes a Doppler shift correction. The final result is a 50 kHz periodic BPSK signal with 23 dBm equivalent isotropic radiation power (EIRP), and 120 ms packet length (> 10 � longer than conventional), at a 60 s interval. The proposed solution enables 7 months operation on a 2.5 � 1.2 cm LiPo battery within a North American search area. To address the antenna size, the optimal transmit frequency was studied and a 1 cm loop antenna with 65% radiation efficiency was designed with internal matching to 50 Ohm. Using the proposed techniques, three satellite flyover experiments were performed to confirm the accuracy of the proposed tracking system and localization algorithms using a USRP-X310, a custom 1 cm-size antenna, and a commercial satellite cluster. The measured average localization error is 320 - 840 m depending on satellite trajectories, demonstrating an improved accuracy in real life measurements compared to prior art with experimental result while simultaneously achieving 15 -- 26 dB lower transmit power and > 3 � lower packet energy.

References

[1]
2022. Earth-centered, Earth-fixed coordinate system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered,_Earth-fixed_coordinate_system#cite_note-1.
[2]
2023. view-source:https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/active.txt.
[3]
I. Ali, N. Al-Dhahir, and J.E. Hershey. 1998. Doppler characterization for LEO satellites. IEEE Transactions on Communications 46, 3 (1998), 309--313. https://doi.org/10.1109/26.662636.
[4]
Amir Arbabi and Safieddin Safavi-Naeini. 2012. Maximum Gain of a Lossy Antenna. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation 60, 1 (Jan. 2012), 2--7.
[5]
KYOCERA AVX. 2022. SCMR14H474PRBB0. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/avx-corporation/SCMR14H474PRBB0/7595422.
[6]
O Bar-Shalom and AJ Weiss. 2009. Efficient direct position determination of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signals. IET radar, sonar & navigation 3, 2 (2009), 101--111.
[7]
Best and Yaghjian. 2004. The lower bounds on Q for lossy electric and magnetic dipole antennas. IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters 3 (2004), 314--316.
[8]
S.R. Best. 2005. A discussion on the quality factor of impedance matched electrically small wire antennas. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation 53, 1 (Jan. 2005), 502--508.
[9]
Tim M. Blackburn and Kevin J. Gaston. 1994. The Distribution of Body Sizes of the World's Bird Species. Oikos 70, 1 (1994), 127--130. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3545707.
[10]
Gregory E. Bottomley and Douglas A. Cairns. 2019. Approximate Maximum Likelihood Radio Emitter Geolocation With Time-Varying Doppler. IEEE Trans. Aerospace Electron. Systems 55, 1 (2019), 429--443.
[11]
Willem Bouten, Edwin W Baaij, Judy Shamoun-Baranes, and Kees CJ Camphuysen. 2013. A flexible GPS tracking system for studying bird behaviour at multiple scales. Journal of Ornithology 154, 2 (2013), 571--580.
[12]
Yajing Chen, Nikolaos Chiotellis, Li-Xuan Chuo, Carl Pfeiffer, Yao Shi, Ronald G. Dreslinski, Anthony Grbic, Trevor Mudge, David D. Wentzloff, David Blaauw, and Hun Seok Kim. 2016. Energy-Autonomous Wireless Communication for Millimeter-Scale Internet-of-Things Sensor Nodes. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 34, 12 (Dec. 2016), 3962--3977.
[13]
L. J. Chu. 1948. Physical Limitations of Omni-Directional Antennas. Journal of Applied Physics 19, 12 (Dec. 1948), 1163--1175. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1715038.
[14]
Zachary Clements, Patrick Ellis, Mark Psiaki, and Todd E Humphreys. 2022. Geolocation of terrestrial GNSS spoofing signals from low earth orbit. In Proceedings of the 35th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2022). 3418--3431. https://radionavlab.ae.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/clements-spoofer-geolocation.pdf.
[15]
LiPol Battery Co. 2021. 3.7V Standard Li Polymer Battery 200mAh+. https://www.li-polymer-battery.com/3-7v-standard-li-polymer-battery-8mah+/.
[16]
Nathan W. Cooper, Michael T. Hallworth, and Peter P. Marra. 2017. Light-level geolocation reveals wintering distribution, migration routes, and primary stopover locations of an endangered long-distance migratory songbird. Journal of Avian Biology 48, 2 (2017), 209--219.
[17]
CaJacob Daniel, McCarthy Nicholas, O'Shea Timothy, and McGwier Robert. 2016. Geolocation of RF emitters with a formation-flying cluster of three microsatellites. (2016). https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3379&context=smallsat.
[18]
Robert L Delong, Brent S Stewart, and Roger D Hill. 1992. Documenting migrations of northern elephant seals using day length. Marine Mammal Science 8, 2 (1992), 155--159.
[19]
Ruoqi Deng, Boya Di, Hongliang Zhang, Linling Kuang, and Lingyang Song. 2021. Ultra-Dense LEO Satellite Constellations: How Many LEO Satellites Do We Need? IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 20, 8 (2021), 4843--4857.
[20]
J. Dyson. 1973. Measurement of near fields of antennas and scatterers. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation 21, 4 (July 1973), 446--460.
[21]
Patrick Ellis, Donald Van Rheeden, and Farid Dowla. 2020. Use of Doppler and Doppler rate for RF geolocation using a single LEO satellite. IEEE Access 8 (2020), 12907--12920. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8957111.
[22]
Ruben Morales Ferre, Elena Simona Lohan, Heidi Kuusniemi, Jaan Praks, Sanna Kaasalainen, Christina Pinell, and Mahmoud Elsanhoury. 2022. Is LEO-Based Positioning with Mega-Constellations the Answer for Future Equal Access Localization? IEEE Communications Magazine 60, 6 (2022), 40--46.
[23]
Armin Gruen, Emmanuel Baltsavias, and Olof Henricsson. 1997. Automatic extraction of man-made objects from aerial and space images (II). Springer Science & Business Media. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-0348-9242-1_25.
[24]
Michael T Hallworth and Peter P. Marra. 2015. Miniaturized GPS Tags Identify Non-breeding Territories of a Small Breeding Migratory Songbird. Scientific Reports 5 (June 2015), 11069.
[25]
K.C. Ho and Y.T. Chan. 1993. Solution and performance analysis of geolocation by TDOA. IEEE Trans. Aerospace Electron. Systems 29, 4 (1993), 1311--1322. https://doi.org/10.1109/7.259534.
[26]
Samantha M. Knight, Grace M. Pitman, D. T. Tyler Flockhart, and D. Ryan Norris. 2019. Radio-tracking reveals how wind and temperature influence the pace of daytime insect migration. Biology Letters 15, 7 (2019), 20190327.
[27]
Sharbel Kozhaya, Haitham Kanj, and Zaher M. Kassas. 2023. Multi-Constellation Blind Beacon Estimation, Doppler Tracking, and Opportunistic Positioning with OneWeb, Starlink, Iridium NEXT, and Orbcomm LEO Satellites. In 2023 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS). IEEE.
[28]
Michelle A LaRue, Seth Stapleton, and Morgan Anderson. 2017. Feasibility of using high-resolution satellite imagery to assess vertebrate wildlife populations. Conservation biology 31, 1 (2017), 213--220.
[29]
Inhee Lee, Roger Hsiao, Gordy Carichner, Chin-Wei Hsu, Mingyu Yang, Sara Shoouri, Katherine Ernst, Tess Carichner, Yuyang Li, Jaechan Lim, Cole R. Julick, Eunseong Moon, Yi Sun, Jamie Phillips, Kristi L. Montooth, Delbert A. Green, Hun-Seok Kim, and David Blaauw. 2021. MSAIL: Milligram-Scale Multi-Modal Sensor Platform for Monarch Butterfly Migration Tracking. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 21, 14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 517--530.
[30]
Creon Levit and William Marshall. 2011. Improved orbit predictions using two-line elements. Advances in Space Research 47, 7 (2011), 1107--1115. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117710006964.
[31]
L. Libby. 1946. Special aspects of balanced shielded loops. Proc. IRE 34, 9 (Sept. 1946), 641--646.
[32]
Lotek. 2022. PinPoint GPS Argos for birds and bats. https://www.lotek.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PinPoint-GPS-Argos-for-birds-Spec-Sheet.pdf.
[33]
Mathworks. 2022. Satellite Communications Toolbox. https://www.mathworks.com/products/satellite-communications.html.
[34]
Jonathan C. McDowell. 2020. The Low Earth Orbit Satellite Population and Impacts of the SpaceX Starlink Constellation. The Astrophysical Journal 892, 2 (APR 2020), L36.
[35]
Thomas A Milligan. 2005. Modern antenna design. John Wiley & Sons.
[36]
Mini-Circuits. 2022. ZVE-6W-83+. https://www.minicircuits.com/WebStore/dashboard.html?model=ZVE-6W-83%2B.
[37]
Iza S. Mohamad Hashim, Akram Al-Hourani, and Branko Ristic. 2022. Satellite Localization of IoT Devices Using Signal Strength and Doppler Measurements. IEEE Wireless Communications Letters 11, 9 (2022), 1910--1914.
[38]
Michelangelo Morganti, Diego Rubolini, Susanne �kesson, Ana Bermejo, Javier de la Puente, Roberto Lardelli, Felix Liechti, Giovanni Boano, Erika Tomassetto, Mauro Ferri, et al. 2018. Effect of light-level geolocators on apparent survival of two highly aerial swift species. Journal of Avian Biology 49, 1 (2018), jav-01521.
[39]
Matthew J Murrian, Lakshay Narula, Peter A Iannucci, Scott Budzien, Brady W O'Hanlon, Mark L Psiaki, and Todd E Humphreys. 2021. First results from three years of GNSS interference monitoring from low Earth orbit. Navigation 68, 4 (2021), 673--685.
[40]
Rapha�l Musseau, Melina Bastianelli, Clementine Bely, C�line Rousselle, and Olivier Dehorter. 2021. Using miniaturized GPS archival tags to assess home range features of a small plunge-diving bird: the European Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis). Avian Research 12, 30 (June 2021).
[41]
Carl Pfeiffer. 2017. Fundamental Efficiency Limits for Small Metallic Antennas. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation 65, 4 (April 2017), 1642--1650. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAP.2017.2670532.
[42]
Ettus Research. 2022. USRP X310. https://www.ettus.com/all-products/x310-ki.
[43]
S. Stein. 1981. Algorithms for ambiguity function processing. IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing 29, 3 (1981), 588--599.
[44]
Philip Taylor, Tara Crewe, Stuart Mackenzie, Denis Lepage, Yves Aubry, Zoe Crysler, George Finney, Charles Francis, Christopher Guglielmo, Diana Hamilton, et al. 2017. The Motus Wildlife Tracking System: a collaborative research network to enhance the understanding of wildlife movement. Avian Conservation and Ecology 12, 1 (2017). https://www.ace-eco.org/vol12/iss1/art8/.
[45]
B.B. Tierney and A. Grbic. 2014. Design of Self-Matched Planar Loop Resonators for Wireless Nonradiative Power Transfer. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques 62, 4 (April 2014), 909--919.
[46]
Brian B. Tierney and Anthony Grbic. 2014. Planar Shielded-Loop Resonators. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation 62, 6 (June 2014), 3310--3320. https://dorg/10.1109/TAP.2014.2314305.
[47]
Liran Tzafri and Anthony J. Weiss. 2016. High-Resolution Direct Position Determination Using MVDR. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 15, 9 (2016), 6449--6461. https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2016.2585116.
[48]
International Telecommunication Union. 2012. Recommendation ITU-R P.676-9: Attenuation by atmospheric gases. https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/p/R-REC-P.676-9-201202-S!!PDF-E.pdf.
[49]
Yue Wang and K. C. Ho. 2018. Unified Near-Field and Far-Field Localization for AOA and Hybrid AOA-TDOA Positionings. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 17, 2 (2018), 1242--1254. https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2017.2777457.
[50]
Ben G Weinstein. 2018. A computer vision for animal ecology. Journal of Animal Ecology 87, 3 (2018), 533--545.
[51]
Anthony J Weiss. 2011. Direct geolocation of wideband emitters based on delay and Doppler. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 59, 6 (2011), 2513--2521. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSP.2011.2128311.
[52]
H.A. Wheeler. 1947. Fundamental Limitations of Small Antennas. Proceedings of the IRE 35, 12 (Dec. 1947), 1479--1484.
[53]
Mingyu Yang, Roger Hsiao, Gordy Carichner, Katherine Ernst, Jaechan Lim, Delbert A Green, Inhee Lee, David Blaauw, and Hun-Seok Kim. 2021. Migrating Monarch butterfly localization using multi-modal sensor fusion neural networks. In 2020 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO). IEEE, 1792--1796.

Index Terms

  1. Global Localization of Energy-Constrained Miniature RF Emitters using Low Earth Orbit Satellites

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    SenSys '23: Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems
    November 2023
    574 pages
    ISBN:9798400704147
    DOI:10.1145/3625687
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 26 April 2024

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. ambiguity function
    2. direct position determination
    3. electrically-small antenna
    4. global localization
    5. low earth orbit satellites
    6. miniature objects tracking
    7. waveform design

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 174 of 867 submissions, 20%

    Upcoming Conference

    SenSys '24

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • 0
      Total Citations
    • 109
      Total Downloads
    • Downloads (Last 12 months)109
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)21
    Reflects downloads up to 21 Oct 2024

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    View Options

    Get Access

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media