Spectral efficiency aligns well with Doppler positioning in LEO clusters
On the Alignment Between Spectral Efficiency and Positioning Accuracy in Multi-LEO Clusters
Networking and Internet Architecture
Summary
LEO satellites help with both communication and locating devices, but it's unclear how improving one affects the other. The authors studied how well communication efficiency and positioning accuracy work together in groups of satellites. They found that communication quality matches up well with Doppler-based positioning accuracy but not as much with time-based positioning. This means satellites designed for good communication also tend to provide good Doppler-based location data.
What this means in practice
- •For satellite network engineers: Optimize LEO satellite clusters for joint communication and Doppler-based positioning by leveraging their strong correlation revealed in this study.
- •For telecommunications operators: Develop 6G NTN services that integrate communication and positioning functions efficiently in LEO constellations based on insights about performance alignment.
Authors
Konstantinos Kapoglis, Sharief Saleh, Henk Wymeersch, Hazem Sallouha
Abstract
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are expected to play a key role in future 6G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs), where dense deployments enable cooperative multi-satellite processing for communication and positioning. While existing works have addressed communication and localization objectives separately, the correlation and alignment between these objectives remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we investigate the correlation between Spectral Efficiency (SE) and positioning accuracy in cooperative multi-LEO satellite clusters. We consider an uplink direct-to-device scenario in which multiple satellites jointly process user signals and evaluate cluster performance using SE and Position Error Bound (PEB) metrics. We derive Time-of-Arrival (TOA)-based and Doppler-based PEBs, while communication performance is quantified through the achievable SE under joint signal processing. Using realistic LEO constellation simulations, we demonstrate that for clusters of seven satellites, SE exhibits a strong negative correlation with Doppler-based PEB (correlation coefficient of $-0.72$). In contrast, its correlation with TOA-based PEB is notably weaker, ranging between $-0.55$ and $-0.37$. These findings suggest that communication-oriented LEO clusters are largely compatible with Doppler-based positioning, but not necessarily with TOA-based positioning.