- ADS-B aircraft tracking from space — LEO satellites receive 1090 MHz ADS-B transmissions to track aircraft over oceans and polar regions where ground radar cannot reach. Aireon, hosted on Iridium NEXT, is the only fully operational global system with published performance data.
- AIS dark vessel detection from orbit — Spaceborne AIS captures what vessels choose to broadcast; SAR captures what is actually there. The gap between those two layers is where dark vessels live.
- AIS message spoofing and manipulation pattern analysis — Fabricated AIS messages, phantom vessels and MMSI cloning are detectable by cross-referencing spaceborne AIS reception with SAR imagery and RF geolocation. Temporal and geometric inconsistencies in message sequences expose manipulation that shore-based AIS alone cannot resolve.
- Unmanned aerial vehicle RF control link detection from orbit — Spaceborne RF receivers can intercept UAS command-and-control and video downlink transmissions, but the physics is unforgiving. This page sets out what is genuinely detectable, under what conditions, and where the method runs out of road.
- EPIRB and PLB signal detection from orbit — The Cospas-Sarsat system turns 406 MHz distress transmissions into geolocated alerts via LEO Doppler processing and MEO near-instantaneous relay. Understanding its geometry, latency and gaps is essential for any government operating search-and-rescue coordination.
- Fishing vessel activity inference from RF fingerprinting — Passive RF detection from low Earth orbit can locate fishing vessels that have disabled or never carried AIS, by capturing navigation radar pulses, VHF traffic, and fish-finder emissions. Vessel-type inference from RF signatures alone is probabilistic, not definitive, and this page explains exactly where the confidence holds and where it does not.
- GNSS jamming zone mapping from space — Deliberate GNSS jamming raises the L-band noise floor across wide areas. Spaceborne RF receivers can detect, geolocate and map those elevated noise zones in near-real-time, giving governments and operators a picture that no ground network alone can provide.
- GNSS spoofing event detection and attribution — GNSS spoofing displaces reported positions while leaving a physical trace detectable by SAR and multi-constellation signal analysis. This page covers detection methods, documented incidents, and honest limits.
- HF skywave emitter monitoring from low Earth orbit — High-frequency transmissions bounce off the ionosphere, confounding ground-based direction-finding. Spaceborne receivers intercept the direct upward wave before refraction, enabling geolocation that ground networks cannot reliably achieve alone.
- Illegal and unlicensed broadcast transmitter detection — Spaceborne wideband receivers can detect and geolocate HF, VHF, and FM broadcast transmitters operating outside licensed frequency, power, or geographic limits. This page explains the physics, the sensors, and the hard limits regulators need to understand before commissioning a campaign.
- Ionospheric scintillation monitoring via GNSS from LEO — Plasma bubbles in the ionosphere cause GNSS signal amplitude and phase fluctuations that can ground aircraft, disrupt precision agriculture and mimic jamming. LEO radio-occultation constellations now map scintillation events globally, giving operators the evidence to tell space weather from hostile interference.
- Terrestrial LTE and GSM coverage mapping from LEO — Spaceborne SDR receivers detect LTE and GSM downlink emissions beyond their intended service areas, providing an independent audit of operator coverage claims and flagging unplanned cross-border signal spillage.
- Shipborne radar activity monitoring from orbit — Passive detection of X-band and S-band navigation radar emissions from LEO satellites can confirm ship presence and operational status independently of AIS, exposing vessels that are dark by choice rather than by accident.
- Military tactical datalink emission detection from orbit — Spaceborne wideband RF sensors can detect the presence and approximate location of military tactical datalink emissions such as Link 16 without decrypting them. This page covers what the open literature says about detection physics, geolocation accuracy, revisit limits, and why the application sits in legally and diplomatically sensitive territory.
- Offshore platform and subsea cable RF activity monitoring — Fixed offshore infrastructure emits predictable RF signatures. When those signatures change or disappear, spaceborne RF monitoring can catch it before a vessel inspection ever reaches the site.
- Push-to-talk VHF/UHF radio geolocation from space — Short-duration VHF/UHF push-to-talk radios are hard to fix from orbit precisely because they are brief and unpredictable. Multi-satellite TDOA/FDOA geometry can locate them, but only when the intercept probability problem is solved first.
- Radar emitter geolocation from low Earth orbit — Passive RF-sensing satellites can fix the position of ground-based and shipborne radar transmitters without illuminating them, using time- and frequency-difference-of-arrival geometry across multi-satellite formations. Accuracy, revisit and ambiguity limits depend heavily on constellation geometry and emitter behaviour.
- Radio frequency interference mapping in SAR imagery — Ground-based transmitters in or near the C- and L-band SAR operating windows inject bright streaks and range-ambiguity artefacts into satellite radar imagery. Characterising that contamination reveals both where emitters sit and how to suppress them.
- Satellite communications interference source location — Uplink interference, whether accidental cross-polarisation or deliberate jamming, can be geolocated by comparing the time and power differences of the same signal arriving at adjacent satellites. This page covers the physics, the published ITU procedures, and the practical limits of the method.
- VHF and UHF spectrum occupancy surveys from orbit — Wideband SDR payloads in LEO measure how densely VHF and UHF spectrum is occupied across entire regions in a single pass, revealing usage patterns no terrestrial monitor network can replicate at comparable scale.