This follow-up to a 2007 Inside GNSS article looking at the potential future role for C-band in navigation details how, nearly 20 years later, it’s moved from an interesting idea to critical for resilient position, navigation and timing (PNT).
PAUL ANDERSON, GEORGE SCHMITT, FURQAN AHMED, PATRICK SHANNON, TRUSTPOINT INC.
A 2007 Inside GNSS article examined C-band as a future for GNSS signals, with authors outlining its advantages and disadvantages when compared to L-band in context of the Galileo system and its potential role. Nearly 20 years later, we reexamine the cost/benefit trades for C-band for navigation in the context of the NewSpace economy and future commercial GNSS systems operating in low Earth orbit (LEO). In that time, C-band has become critical for resilient PNT, with TrustPoint beginning to deploy a proliferated LEO constellation of microsatellites broadcasting next-generation navigation signals in the 5010 to 5030 MHz Radionavigation Satellite Service (RNSS) allocation at C-band. TrustPoint’s future LEO GNSS service will enable rapid time-to-first-fix, meter and sub-meter positioning accuracy, improved jamming resistance due to frequency selection, diversity and increased signal strength, and an encrypted, spoof tolerant signal with built-in authentication.
The Paradigm Shift of Commercial GNSS
Over the past 50 years, the U.S. GPS and international GNSS counterparts have provided invaluable services in support of commercial, civil government, and military operations across the globe. Given the crucial role they play, it is difficult to envision a world without the ever-present support of these services streaming down from space. Recent reports estimate the global installed base of GNSS-enabled devices is projected to grow from 5.6 billion units in 2023 to almost 9 billion units across all markets by 2033, with the number of GNSS devices shipped per year increasing from 1.6 billion in 2023 to 2.2 billion units in 2033. As humanity exits the first complete epoch of the information age and boldly leans into the age of autonomy and ubiquitous connectivity, there is an expectation that GNSS-enabled devices will further proliferate and continue integrating more broadly and deeply into our way of life.
While humanity finds tens, if not hundreds, of new applications for GNSS every year, and develops an analogous number of unique receivers, the update rate for the satellite systems and the signals they transmit follow closer to decadal timeframes. This slow rate of technical progress is driven by a variety of factors, including the high costs of government system development, limited spectrum availability, and strict backwards compatibility requirements. Unfortunately, this rate of technical progress is severely outpaced by adversarial activity, new application requirements, and technologies from adjacent markets readily available for integration into the larger GNSS ecosystem. In response to this reality, TrustPoint has architected a responsive, resilient and evolutionary LEO PNT system and signal paradigm that enables rapid service upgrades to achieve receiver forward compatibility.
To date, all space-based PNT systems and services have been funded, owned and operated exclusively by world governments with significant budgets, lengthy schedules, and public Interface Control Documents (ICDs). A new era of space-based alternative PNT (A-PNT) is dawning with the emergence of venture-backed commercial companies seeking to fill capability gaps of heritage GNSS services with new technologies and solutions targeting a $260 billion plus total addressable market in navigation and location-based services enabled by commercial satellite platforms and advancements in microelectronics technology. This is a paradigm shift in that GNSS users will soon have access to commercial “PNT-as-a-Service” in addition to the heritage GNSS systems owned by world governments. Novel A-PNT business models and pricing strategies, proprietary signal ICDs, and service-level agreements specifying signal availability and signal-in-space accuracy will become standard—and this will fundamentally change the way global users subscribe to and access next-generation A-PNT services enabling secure, resilient and high-accuracy time and position solutions.
TrustPoint is deploying a purpose-built, commercial A-PNT service using a proliferated LEO constellation of microsatellites broadcasting next-generation navigation signals in the 5010 to 5030 MHz RNSS allocation at C-band. TrustPoint’s commercial, dual-use LEO PNT system and C-band service will enable rapid time-to-first-fix, meter and sub-meter positioning accuracy, improved jamming resistance due to frequency selection, diversity and increased signal strength, and an encrypted, spoof-tolerant signal with built-in authentication for all users. The solution is made possible by our constellation of low-cost LEO microsatellites that leverage commoditized space platforms, rideshare launch services, and patented innovations in navigation signal generation and processing at the RF physical and navigation data layers, enabling next-generation commercial GNSS services made possible by smaller wavelengths, smaller satellites and smaller orbits.
In this article, we summarize the cost and benefit trades of C-band versus L-band at LEO versus medium Earth Orbit (MEO), inclusive of considerations for space segment design, architecture, and size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C); signal and service design; and attenuation effects and path delay.
Commercial Space Segment Considerations
Why is it that after 50 years of satellite navigation technologies and services, LEO PNT has only become relevant in the past 5 years? The answer could lie in the trifecta of (1) the commoditization of microsatellite platforms spurred by the “NewSpace” ecosystem dominated by commercial players; (2) continued miniaturization of software-defined radios and other analog and digital electronics; and (3) the routine availability of low-cost rideshare launch opportunities to common LEO orbits. TrustPoint is leveraging all three of these factors to enable a commercially-funded space segment that is both affordable and high-capability—a combination that wasn’t possible at the scale needed for a new LEO PNT system even 5 years ago. Proliferated LEO architectures comprised of small-but-capable satellites have been technically, cost-prohibitively, or politically out of reach for First World governments, let alone commercial enterprises seeking to generate revenue from new PNT service offerings. As space technologies within the NewSpace economy have continued to relentlessly evolve on accelerated timelines, bootstrapped by venture capital and driven by new use cases arising from humanity’s increasingly interconnected and autonomous future, it is now possible for a commercial business to pursue—in fact, succeed in—delivering space-based LEO PNT services.

Proliferated LEO Constellation. Design and analysis of proliferated LEO constellations for alternative PNT is well-studied in the literature and may be considered a solved problem, see for example [3, 4,5]. The key consideration with lowering the orbital altitude of a PNT system from GNSS MEO altitudes (19,000 to 24,000 km) down to LEO altitudes (500 to 1,000 km) is the number of satellites required to provide persistent four-in-view (“4-fold”) coverage increases exponentially as the altitude decreases, specifically according to this summary relation for minimum number of satellites:

where K=4 for four-in-view coverage, and θ is the Earth central angle. Assuming a 10° minimum elevation angle for a terrestrial user accessing a LEO constellation at 550 km, θ=15°, which translates to more than 400 satellites required to maintain persistent, global 4-fold coverage at the minimum orbit inclination imin=90–θ=75 deg. This can be reduced by combining multiple “shells” where each shell is defined as a unique altitude, inclination, number of planes, and number of satellite slots per plane. Heterogeneous combinations of shells can then provide superior coverage properties for PNT applications in terms of common metrics such as 4-fold daily availability, 4-fold recovery time in the event of intermittent outage, and the variants of Dilution of Precision (DOP).
Given the significant number of minimum satellites required for LEO PNT coverage when compared with the order of magnitude fewer satellites used in heritage GNSS constellations, the prudent system architect must trade optimal constellation geometry and coverage properties to improve the system cost and operational considerations. The availability of commoditized rideshare launch opportunities has spurred dramatic reductions in launch cost per kilogram of upmass, but these rideshare launch opportunities target standard Sun-Synchronous and mid-inclination destinations, so cost savings for leveraging rideshare launch are only realized if the operational orbits for the LEO PNT system are “close” to these standard dropoff locations. Higher altitude LEO orbits above 700 km, or non-standard LEO orbits such as elliptical orbits, carry additional requirements for last-mile delivery services via Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTVs) or expensive dedicated launch services.
In addition, with an increasingly congested space environment, the number of planes, inter-plane phasing, and intra-plane phasing must be carefully considered in light of operational and spaceflight safety constraints, namely (1) access to routine ground station contacts for telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C); (2) routine collision avoidance course of action assessment (arising from both external conjunctions and self-conjunctions amongst satellites in the same LEO constellation); and (3) sufficient end-of-life deorbit to ensure compliance with flowdown regulatory requirements from the cognizant licensing authority. A lack of consideration for any of these items can lead to significantly higher incurred costs for LEO system development, deployment, operation, and sustainment, which are especially critical for commercial entities in the process of developing new LEO PNT systems and services.
The deployment of hundreds of satellites necessarily takes time, so another important consideration is not only the final end-state constellation design, but the roll-out plan for various phases of the constellation deployment, which impacts coverage and system performance over time. At full operational capability (FOC), constellation management pivots from deployment to sustainment, and given that 3 to 5 years of design life is typical for low-cost LEO microsatellites, upwards of 20% of the constellation capacity may need to be replaced on an annual basis, depending on satellite reliability, orbital altitude, space weather conditions, and the solar cycle (which impacts atmospheric density and therefore the rate at which LEO orbits decay due to atmospheric drag). This underscores the importance of minimizing the total cost per satellite delivered to orbit, while maximizing production capacity to ensure routine readiness of replacement batches of satellites that are acceptance tested, flight-ready, and standing by for launch.
Commoditized Microsatellites. The global small satellite market grew from $5.4 billion in 2023 to $6.6 billion in 2024, and is projected to grow to $14 billion by 2028, driven by both NewSpace incumbents and new LEO constellation entrants in the areas of SATCOM, EO/IR imagery, RF sensing, SAR, and PNT [6]. Small satellites comprised 93% of all spacecraft launched from 2014 to 2023, accounting for 41% of total upmass, given the 25x increase in the number of small satellites launched per year from 2014 (115) to 2023 (2,860) [7]. These trends have been enabled by the increasing commoditization of satellite components, subsystems and entire platforms with competitive price points, sub-12-month lead times, and increasing capability densities for performing diverse mission sets. What was once only feasible with a government-class budget and schedules measured in years—or even decades—is now doable for venture-backed commercial startups with small budgets and schedules measured in months.
From 2022 to 2023, TrustPoint reviewed 16 CubeSat-class platforms (3U, 6U and 12U, where 1U is defined as a 10x10x10 cm cube) offered as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products by commercial bus providers both in the U.S. and internationally. These platforms ranged from Technology Readiness Level (TRL)-6 to TRL-9, and were scored based on SWaP available to the payload, ease of integrating a propulsion system, and lead times and unit pricing for various quantities of identical units. For an RF payload, the size and weight can, in general, be optimized, but power consumption is directly related to the duty cycle that is allowable for signal transmission—indeed, “P” is the most challenging dimension of SWaP for a PNT application. As shown in Figure 1, these 16 reviewed CubeSat platforms can be grouped into four categories on the basis of Orbit Average Power (OAP) available to the payload and the unit cost per platform at small quantities. Our survey confirmed strong advancements in CubeSat technologies over the last 3 to 5 years, specifically 2 to 3x increases in OAP available to the payload and 30% to 50% reductions in platform cost. Furthermore, our assessment identified multiple bus providers in the “pack leader” category who are aggressively pushing toward higher capability at a lower price point by means of vertical integration and continuous innovation in bus technology stacks, and preparing parallel production lines and supply chains to enable an additional 20% to 30% unit cost reduction for the large quantities required for fielding a proliferated LEO constellation.
Multiple high-performance CubeSat platforms in the $200,000 to $300,000 range are now available, inasmuch as the PNT payload being integrated with the commercial bus conforms to standard mechanical, electrical and thermal interface requirements. This price point per constellation node is multiple orders of magnitude beneath the price tag of a single GNSS MEO satellite. Given the cost of a single GPS Block III satellite is estimated at $250 million, a $250,000 price point per LEO CubeSat is a 1/1000x reduction that trades the larger available SWaP and 2 to 3x increased design life of a heritage MEO satellite for the dramatically reduced unit cost per commercial LEO microsatellite.


Low SWaP C-Band PNT Payload. Thanks to the realization of Gordon Moore’s (co-founder of Intel) famous 1965 prediction that the number of transistors on microchips would double approximately every two years, the SWaP of commercially available microelectronics has significantly reduced over the past 50 years of satellite navigation technologies. The semiconductor industry has continuously innovated to shrink the size of transistors to fit more onto single microchips, thereby increasing transistor density per integrated circuit and leading to electronics with higher efficiency, increased compute performance, and lower cost per chip. “Moore’s Law” has significantly influenced the miniaturization of software-defined radios over time [9] and has driven significant SWaP reductions and performance increases in foundational microelectronics for mobile phones, GNSS user equipment (Figure 2), and myriad other technologies.
Similarly, the advancements resulting from Moore’s Law can be leveraged to develop a low SWaP commercial PNT payload for integration into a commercial microsatellite bus with standard interfaces. TrustPoint’s C-band PNT payload is CubeSat compatible and less than 2 kg in mass, providing stable, high-power C-band transmission capability, onboard navigation message generation, and precision GPS-independent timekeeping—all packaged in a form factor that fits in the palm of your hand. Leveraging low-cost, widely-available COTS products integrated in a proprietary electromechanical configuration that is space-qualified for moderate LEO orbits, TrustPoint has designed, integrated, tested and launched the first purpose-built, commercial microsatellites capable of transmitting next-generation C-band LEO PNT signals as both a complement to GPS /GNSS and an independent A-PNT source.

Commoditized Launch. Deployment and sustainment of a proliferated LEO constellation of hundreds of satellites necessitates low-cost, reliable and timely space launch services. Over the last 5 years, commoditized rideshare launch services from multiple commercial launch providers have been introduced into the market and matured, driving orders of magnitude reductions in launch pricing that have made access to LEO affordable for non-government entities. Commercial offerings such as SpaceX’s SmallSat Rideshare Program, with its Transporter and Bandwagon mission series, have provided unprecedented routine access to standard LEO orbits including Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) and mid-inclination, at sub-$5,000 per kilogram pricing (Figure 3). Coupled with orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) that provide “last-mile” delivery services to specific orbital slots, entire planes of a proliferated LEO constellation can be populated from a single launch opportunity at a fraction of the cost of a single heritage GNSS satellite, which requires a dedicated launch service to a single orbital slot in MEO.
As additional medium-lift and heavy-lift class launch vehicles emerge and become viable in the commercial space ecosystem within the next 5 years, e.g., SpaceX’s Starship, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and others, the launch cost per kilogram is projected to continue decreasing, enabling affordable LEO constellation deployment and sustainment. System design considerations and optimizations such as standard satellite form factors compatible with industry-standard separation systems, standard LEO orbits at moderate altitudes, and advance bulk buys of launch capacity have the potential to further reduce launch pricing at the scale necessary for proliferated LEO PNT.
Geographic Diversity. From LEO altitudes, a single satellite transmits to less than 10M km2 of effective surface area, whereas a single GNSS satellite at MEO transmits to 200M km2 of surface area (Figure 4). At first glance, this 20x increased Field-of-View for GNSS from MEO appears to put LEO PNT systems at a disadvantage—but GPS was optimized for global “one-size-fits-most” PNT, and this approach is no longer effective for increasing numbers of civil, commercial, and military users and applications demanding flexibility and bespoke services in uncertain and evolving environments. The smaller footprint of LEO satellites, coupled with end-to-end software and firmware reprogrammability by design, provides an advantage in that signal parameters can be dynamically varied over different parts of Earth. On the same orbit revolution, a TrustPoint satellite can service the Continental United States with a given signal, then Asian markets with a different signal, and then mainland European markets with yet a different signal. The flexibility of this PNT-as-a-Service business model has nascent dual-use commercial and defense applications, and further is a wartime deterrent in that reconstitution of degraded PNT capability is as rapid as an on-orbit software update, or command uplink to increase the number of satellites tasked with transmitting a desired signal over the impacted area as a countermeasure.

Angular Velocity. According to Keplerian motion, the orbital speed of a circular LEO orbit is about twice as fast as a circular MEO orbit. Range rates between terrestrial users and LEO satellites depend on factors such as the latitude of the user and the altitude and inclination of the satellite, and are on the order of 10 to 15x faster than range ranges that are typical for GNSS satellites (Figure 5, left). The result is single LEO satellite accesses are on the order of 5 to 10 minutes as compared to 3 to 4 hours during which single GNSS satellites are in view from a given terrestrial user in the absence of line-of-sight obstructions. Because the Doppler shift of the carrier frequency is directly proportional to both the range rate and the carrier frequency, it follows that the increase in range rate for LEO orbits, coupled with the increase in frequency from L-band to C-band, leads to Doppler shift that is 30x greater for C-band LEO than the Doppler shift that is typical for L-band GNSS from MEO (Figure 5, right).
Although increased angular velocity makes signal acquisition more challenging, and drives requirements for advanced acquisition techniques and increased data rates to ensure rapid time-to-first-fix (TTFF), increased range rates resulting from faster orbital speeds in LEO have the benefit of rapidly-changing overhead geometries that reduce outages for urban canyon users, and have the potential to accelerate carrier phase ambiguity resolution timelines. Given a LEO satellite has a 10x faster range rate than a MEO satellite, and the L-band wavelength is approximately fC1/fL1 = 3.2x longer than the C-band wavelength (6 cm), the resulting rate of change in carrier phase for TrustPoint’s C1 signal is 30x faster than for L-band GNSS from MEO, which has implications for cycle slip detection and integer ambiguity resolution.

Signal and Service Design Considerations
Frequency Diversity. As the RNSS allocation in L-band becomes increasingly congested with current and planned GNSS signals in MEO and LEO, the international GNSS community has begun to consider alternative frequencies for satellite navigation services, specifically unused RNSS allocations at C-band. In addition to L-band congestion driven by future GNSS signals, the criticality of frequency diversity also emerges from global proliferation in GNSS L-band jamming and spoofing threats. Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) at L-band is becoming increasingly prevalent worldwide as low-cost COTS hardware and open-source software enable turnkey GNSS degradation, denial and spoofing capability for bad actors, impacting civil, commercial, military, and even LEO satellite users. The global GPS anti-jamming system market size was estimated at $4.3 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $6.1 billion by 2028 as commercial providers of GNSS chips, receivers and augmentation services continue to implement hardware/software solutions for GNSS jamming and spoofing mitigation. However, the prevalent commercial user base of L-band GNSS does not use bespoke anti-jam or anti-spoof equipment due to higher relative cost or SWaP constraints, leaving sectors such as critical infrastructure and commercial aviation susceptible to EMI threats as a result of their continued dependence on low-power, unencrypted heritage signals at L-band, specifically GPS L1 and L2.
To address demand signals for PNT frequency diversity from the civil, commercial and military markets, TrustPoint has filed for global spectrum rights at the ITU for the C-band RNSS/RDSS allocation, and has developed a next-generation A-PNT service and signal set purpose-built for reconfigurability and enabling our vision of PNT built on signals at smaller wavelengths transmitted from smaller orbits (LEO). In future multi-source user equipment built on open architectures and data standards, incorporating C-band A-PNT signals alongside existing L-band GNSS signals, and signals of opportunity from Ku/Ka-band SATCOM systems, offers the potential for significant improvements in PNT service availability and resiliency through diversification of architectures.
Received Signal Power. For equivalent distance, Free Space Path Loss (FSPL) at C-band is a factor of (fC1/fL1)² = 10.2x stronger (10 dB) than at GPS L1. The downside of increased FSPL at C-band is that Received Signal Strength (RSS) at the user will be reduced accordingly, unless the loss is compensated for elsewhere in the transmit side of the architecture. For TrustPoint, the 10 dB loss from increasing the carrier frequency from L-band to C-band is compensated for by lowering the space segment to 500 to 700 km LEO altitudes, for which the FSPL at the equivalent carrier frequency is reduced by 31 dB at zenith and 23 dB at 10° elevation angle, assuming a reference LEO altitude of 550 km. Therefore, the net effect of shifting the space segment from L-band MEO to C-band LEO is a +21 dB gain at zenith and +13 dB gain at 10° elevation, when considering the combined effects of carrier frequency, orbital altitude, and FSPL only. This power margin can then be allocated directly into the required minimum RSS at the user, or the prudent system architect could choose to trade this margin to decrease transmit EIRP requirements, and in doing so take advantage of SWaP reductions in the space segment.
A notional comparison of RSS at the input to the user antenna for L-band MEO, C-band MEO and C-band LEO cases is provided in Table 2. To achieve the same -158 dBW RSS as the L-band MEO, the C-band MEO system requires a kilowatt-class transmitter to compensate for the increased free space path loss and tropospheric attenuation at C-band. Transmit hardware of this class carries material technical challenges including larger SWaP, higher development and production costs, and significant thermal management considerations. Conversely, the C-band LEO system achieves -158 dBW RSS with only a 15 W (11.8 dBW) transmitter and 8 dBi gain antenna, both of which are microsatellite-compatible with multiple existing hardware solutions on the market today.
Signal Security. TrustPoint’s C-band A-PNT signal incorporates commercial best practices in cryptographic confidentiality of navigation message data, and time-delayed cryptographic authentication of the same data to mitigate spoofing attacks. This includes the use of the Advanced Encryption Standard [11] and a navigation data authentication method similar to the lower-overhead TESLA method [12]. Encryption keys rotate regularly to protect the integrity of the C-band service and deter unauthorized access. Authentication of navigation message data ensures the data as received by the user is signed by TrustPoint and thus approved for use in forming corrected pseudorange observables supporting Position, Velocity and Time (PVT) solutions. This is a counterpoint to the heritage GPS L1 and L2 signals, which do not inherently offer either confidentiality or authentication protections for users.
Advanced Data Elements. One of the benefits of designing a commercial LEO PNT system and service is the ability to clean-sheet the navigation message structure and enable the opportunities for civil, commercial and military users to embed bespoke data of their choosing within the constraints of the defined message structure. Data rates need not be as high as commercial Ku/Ka-band SATCOM services to provide the dual-use commercial benefits and military utility of embedding GNSS integrity, clock and ephemeris corrections, and/or other augmentation information within the LEO PNT navigation message.

C-Band Attenuation and Propagation Delay Considerations
How do the signal attenuation and propagation delay differ between the C-band LEO GNSS and the L-band MEO GNSS? Table 3 provides a quantitative, side-by-side comparative analysis of RF attenuation and path delay considerations for these two approaches. C-band LEO GNSS benefits from superior FSPL and significantly lower ionospheric effects (attenuation and delay), incurs modestly increased losses due to tropospheric effects, and is more resilient to multipath errors as a result of the combination of shorter wavelengths at C-band and faster geometry changes at LEO.

Next Generation PNT
This article on LEO GNSS at C-band has outlined macroscopic cost and benefit trades for a commercial LEO GNSS system and service in the 5010 to 5030 MHz band, inclusive of space segment architecture, signal and service design, and RF attenuation and propagation delay considerations. Notably, TrustPoint’s vision for next-generation PNT services supporting humanity’s interconnected, autonomous and augmented future is one in which cooperative C-band LEO PNT services are an independent and trusted input into intelligent multi-source PNT fusion engines leveraging commercial PNT signals, heritage GNSS signals, signals of opportunity, and local sensors for resilient PNT that benefits from diversification of architectures and modalities.
The authors of the 2007 Inside GNSS article, “A Role for C-Band?”, leave their readers with the following prospects for a future C-band system:
“Could we not perhaps apply similar ideas to C-band in order to avoid the high power figures that are needed to compensate for the higher propagation losses of the C-band? Another approach might be to design C-band satellites that only serve users in certain locations and then allow satellite transmissions only while flying over those designated regions and for selected periods of time. Such a time-multiplexing could indeed prove to be interesting one day. Equally interesting would be to use special C-band-emitting satellites with LEO orbits to cope with the problem of signal power loss and navigation data transmission.”
Now, 18 years later and in the context of a commercially-driven NewSpace ecosystem, TrustPoint is doing just that—and C-band for LEO PNT isn’t just “interesting”; it is critical for resilient PNT in the face of global proliferation in L-band GNSS jamming and spoofing.
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Authors
Dr. Paul Anderson is Lead Systems Engineer for TrustPoint, where he leads the development and deployment of proliferated space and ground segments enabling TrustPoint’s commercial C-band PNT services. He brings more than 12 years of experience in astrodynamics, state estimation, space systems engineering, and IV&V across the program lifecycle. He joined TrustPoint from VOX Space, subsidiary of Virgin Orbit, where he led systems engineering for microsatellite launch integration and responsive mission execution. Prior to VOX Space, he led technical teams at The Aerospace Corporation in support of the GPS space and ground segments, multi-source PNT, and RF geolocation. He brings a mission-driven, technically oriented, people-focused approach in pursuit of 100% mission success at scale. He holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder.
George Schmitt is Signals and Processing Lead for TrustPoint, where he drives the company’s waveform design, RTL development, and advanced signal processing efforts, bringing more than 30 years of expertise in digital signal processing, secure communications, and RF system design. His career includes senior technical roles at The Aerospace Corporation, where he developed resilient satellite and ground communication systems for the DOD and intelligence community, and technical leadership positions at Naval Research Laboratory and Orbital Sciences, where he led rapid prototyping on FPGA and GPU platforms. Known for his deeply analytical and hands-on approach, his technical skills span VHDL, Verilog, MATLAB, encryption, radar, comm, and PNT waveform design, and high-speed data protocols. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Furqan Ahmed is a Senior GNSS Scientist at TrustPoint, where he focuses on the development of PVT engines, channel modeling for LEO PNT signals, and simulation of GNSS observations for TrustPoint’s commercial C-band PNT services. He also contributes to payload software development for TrustPoint’s LEO satellites. Previously, he worked in the GNSS positioning engine teams at Qualcomm and Garmin. Prior to joining the PNT industry, he spent time in academia where his research focused on geodetic and atmospheric applications of GNSS. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from the University of Luxembourg.
Patrick Shannon is CEO and co-founder of TrustPoint. Prior to co-founding TrustPoint, he was the VP of Business Development and Operations at Astro Digital where he was responsible for strategy formulation, business development, and product management. During his tenure at Astro Digital, he directly led five satellite programs and a 400% increase in revenue over a three-year period. Before that, he was VP of Business Development at SpaceQuest, where he drove company strategy and oversaw all contract and internal R&D program execution. He got his start as a satellite systems engineer at Orbital Sciences, later transferring to the Corporate Strategy group supporting M&A and government relations. He holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and a MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.