A First Look at the OneWeb LEO Constellation: Beacons, Beams, and Positioning

This article is the first to examine OneWeb low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite signals. First, a blind beacon estimation framework is developed to estimate beacons present in the transmitted OneWeb Ku-band downlink signals. Second, a fast acquisition approach is proposed to reduce the computational complexity of acquiring LEO megaconstellation satellite signals. Third, the blindly estimated beacons are used to identify OneWeb's beams and to characterize their carrier-to-noise ratio. Fourth, Kalman filter-based tracking loops are presented, enabling code and carrier phase tracking of nine OneWeb satellites. Finally, a nonlinear estimator is formulated to demonstrate positioning exclusively with measurements from the nine OneWeb satellites. Starting with an initial estimate 50 km away, the position was estimated with a 2-D error of 30.4 m.