Funding: ESA
Prime contractor: Celestia UK
For millenia people have been telling time observing the rotation of the sun around the Earth. The deployment of mega-constellations in lower Earth orbit brings thousands of objects orbiting around the Earth, raising the question whether they can be used for a precise derivation of time. In this project, we are collecting signals of opportunity (i.e. as they come from the operator and with no decoding capability) from LEO satellites and exploit those to obtain time estimation at a given known location. The goal is to derive sub microsecond time estimation such that it can be used in conjunction with – or even in place of – timing information provided by GNSS systems and used in 5G cellular systems.
![](https://microwaves.site.hw.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/06/ESA_2-1024x491.png)
![](https://microwaves.site.hw.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/06/ESA_1-1024x826.png)