The world's first! Chinese team develops "Optical Navigation" technology, immune to GPS interference

Ask AI · How optical navigation technology can break through the interference bottleneck of traditional navigation?

【By Qiqin Qi, Observer Network】

Last week, Tsinghua University announced that its Intelligent Microsystems and Nanosatellite team spent 20 years working on a breakthrough, successfully developing a global optical navigation positioning technology and system. The announcement said the technology is a world first internationally and has become a key supplement to the BeiDou system.

After the announcement was made public, it drew the attention of Hong Kong English media outlet South China Morning Post.

“Space Lighthouse—China’s anti-jamming satellite network fills GPS black spots,” on March 30, the outlet reported on this headline, saying that the system is anti-jamming and high-precision. Even when GPS signals cannot be used or are jammed, it can still provide positioning services for various missions.

The report also noted that optical navigation technology is currently being used in the Middle East, helping drones continue operating in environments where GPS signals are being jammed.

 

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On March 24, Tsinghua University released the above information, saying the technology comprehensively improves the safety and reliability of China’s navigation system and, in one move, breaks through two major industry bottlenecks under a “satellite radio frequency denial environment” (i.e., using technical means to render satellite navigation systems ineffective within a specific area): “satellite radio frequency cannot be used for positioning” and “astronomical optical positioning precision is insufficient.”

The report said the technology received the Ministry of Education’s 2025 Outstanding Scientific Research Achievements Award (Natural Science and Engineering and Technology), with an engineering technology award—Special Prize. Related products have already been sold to nearly 20 countries including the US, the UK, and France.

According to the introduction, traditional radio navigation is vulnerable to interference and, in complex electromagnetic environments, may experience signal failure. Astronomical optical navigation also has limitations such as weak signal sources and insufficient accuracy. To solve these problems, the Tsinghua team took a different approach: mounting a high-brightness optical beacon on satellites.

The team leader, Professor Xing Fei of the Tsinghua Department of Precision Instruments, said, “Ancient sailors relied on lighthouses for navigation, while what we are doing is bringing the ‘lighthouse’ into space—making the emitting satellites replace the ‘lighthouse’ to become a reliable optical signal that guides all things.”

Xing Fei said that this global navigation system, which uses optical signals as the carrier and angle measurement positioning as the core, mounts high-power, wide-coverage optical beacon sources on satellites and transmits optical signals carrying navigation-encoding information into space. After ground receivers capture the signals, by combining with the satellite’s precise orbit and using the principle of polar coordinates, they can complete their own positioning. On this basis, the team has built a new optical navigation architecture of “signal source reference—transmission link—measuring instruments.”

He said that the wavelength of light waves is extremely short, so they can only propagate in straight lines; interference signals cannot diffract into the receiver’s field of view. Therefore, optical navigation not only has a natural advantage in anti-jamming, but also, through a controllable space-based optical beacon, compensates for the signal-source limitations of astronomical optical navigation, achieving a full-range innovation from underlying principles and methods to application modes.

At present, the team has built an optical navigation constellation consisting of 11 satellites. The technology has also broken through the micro-miniaturization bottleneck of optical sensors, achieving a leap from the ten-kilogram level to the hundred-gram level. This is only the beginning.

This technology has broad prospects for application and will provide entirely new solutions for sectors such as the low-altitude economy and deep-space exploration. The team plans to combine with existing communication infrastructure to build an optical navigation enhancement network, addressing navigation blind spots for drones and autonomous vehicles in tunnels and under complex road conditions.

“We plan to deploy 37 satellites in a near-Earth orbit of about 816 kilometers, thereby achieving global coverage of areas within 60 degrees of latitude north and south of the equator,” Xing Fei explained—this is the region covering the vast majority of the world’s population and economic activity.

South China Morning Post noted that optical navigation also has clear limitations. It requires an unobstructed line of sight, and optical signals are easily affected by weather or obstacles.

The report said that China had previously used optical navigation technology in lunar exploration projects. For example, in 2013, the Chang’e-3 probe relied on cameras to identify lunar surface features, performed autonomous navigation during its descent, and ultimately achieved a precise landing.

 

 In 2024, the launch site for Tsinghua University’s optical navigation satellites Tsinghua University official website 

Meanwhile, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency are also moving forward with developing optical navigation technology.

In a NASA report in 2024, it said that in dim, barren environments like on the lunar surface, it is easy to get lost. Since there are almost no visual landmarks available for identification, astronauts and rover vehicles must rely on other methods to plan routes, such as optical navigation. In October last year, the European Space Agency reported that it had officially launched an optical navigation technology project.

At the same time as the South China Morning Post focused on China’s optical navigation positioning technology, a covert war is unfolding in the Middle East: GPS jamming.

According to an early-March report by the BBC, as the US and Israel and Iran military conflict erupted, the scope of electronic warfare is expanding further to drones and automatic identification systems (AIS), severely interfering with the navigation of nearby vessels. There are also reports that the US forces in the region are using jamming systems to protect their bases, personnel, and ships from attacks by drones and guided weapons.

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