Patent ID: 7579987

Claim:
A method of providing a low earth orbit (LEO) signal from a LEO satellite, the method comprising: providing a plurality of transmit channels over a plurality of transmit slots, wherein the transmit channels comprise a set of communication channels associated with a first set of the transmit slots and a set of navigation channels corresponding to unused communication capacity associated with a second set of the transmit slots; generating a pseudo random noise (PRN) ranging overlay comprising a first navigation signal and a second navigation signal; applying the PRN ranging overlay to the navigation channels to distribute the first navigation signal over a first set of the navigation channels and to distribute the second navigation signal over a second set of the navigation channels; combining the communication channels and the first and second sets of navigation channels into a LEO signal; and broadcasting the LEO signal from the LEO satellite, wherein the LEO signal is a composite LEO signal comprising the communication channels and the first and second sets of navigation channels.