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Iran is likely jamming Starlink

timesofisrael.com

61–70 of 306 posts

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#61

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this? > "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

If the GPS satellites are above the starlink ones how is Iran able to disrupt the GPS signals?

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#62
post #61

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this? > "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

If the GPS satellites are above the starlink ones how is Iran able to disrupt the GPS signals?

By jamming the receivers on the ground

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#63

I am curious if there are any implications for the Russian invasion of Ukraine from this tactic working.

What do you mean, Russia has been doing the same thing for most of the war? The success relies on you controlling the territory, or at least territory close enough, so the results vary.

Isn't Iran doing this from the air? That would be far more effective. In a contested space with AA everywhere that wouldn't be feasible (i.e. large parts of Ukraine)

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#64
post #61

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this? > "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

If the GPS satellites are above the starlink ones how is Iran able to disrupt the GPS signals?

For legal reasons I base this off of nothing but just turn your jammer to the sky. Could get fancy and point out directly at the satellites since my understanding is it's pretty easy to know where they are.

Edit to add: I do not mean the GPS satellites or the starlink ground terminals. That was not the question so that is not my answer. I mean the starlink satellites

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#65
post #61

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this? > "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

If the GPS satellites are above the starlink ones how is Iran able to disrupt the GPS signals?

GPS signals are extremely weak, and they're necessarily received from omnidirectional antennas that can't provide much antenna gain. In some sense it's a miracle of signal processing that GPS can ever be received.

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#66
Does anyone know how Iranians are _actually_ communicating right now? I remember seeing here on HN (admittedly a long time ago) some Bluetooth-mesh technologies that promised decentralized solutions to these very type of problems

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#67
Funny considering the top comment from the two-day old "Iran Goes Into IPv6 Blackout" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46542683):

> Fortunately, the government cannot enforce complete blackout because thousands of startlink terminals are active inside the country. They have been complaining about it to no avail.

Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again, you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#68

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this? > "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

It sounds like Starlink uses GPS to localize the receiver, rather than for any active step in the communication link. Since most receivers are static, I wonder if an effective workaround to this is for the receiver to just remember its last GPS fix for longer, or worst-case allow a manual location specification in lieu of a GPS fix.

Re: Iran is likely jamming Starlink

#70

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this? > "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

This isn’t even true; Starlink can use the local starlink constellation for positioning and the option is available in the customer facing configuration specifically for GPS denied areas (since about two years ago), where it’s been used for ages.

Something else is going on here - perhaps there’s an edge case where Starlink can be made to perform poorly without falling back away from GPS, but I wouldn’t expect this since it’s been “tested” in the most GPS hostile places for quite some time now.

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