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MAE Colloquium: Zak Kassas (Ohio State)

Written by cida on .

Ad Astra: Navigation with Megaconstellation LEO Satellites

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 ground, aerial, and maritime 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.

Bio: Zak (Zaher) M. 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. He is 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 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. He received from President Biden the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation, and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Aerospace & Electronic Systems Society and the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. He was ranked in 2024 by ScholarGPS as the top scholar in the world in the field of Navigation. His awards include the National Science Foundation CAREER award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research YIP award, IEEE Walter Fried Award, IEEE Richard Kershner Award, ION Samuel Burka Award, ION Col. Thomas Thurlow Award, IEEE Harry Rowe Mimno Award; and 40+ best paper and paper presentation awards.