Samsung Patents a Way for Satellites to Locate Your Phone Using Timing Signals
When your phone is talking to a satellite instead of a cell tower, figuring out where you actually are becomes surprisingly hard. Samsung's new patent tackles that problem by having the phone report precise timing clues back to the satellite so the network can work out your position.
How Samsung's satellite timing trick finds your phone
You're in a remote area with no cell towers in sight, but your phone is still connected because a satellite overhead is handling the call. The satellite is far away, moving fast, and the network needs to know your location to route signals correctly and keep the connection stable.
The way this works today is messy. Samsung's patent describes a cleaner method: your phone measures how long signals take to arrive from several different satellite coverage zones, then bundles those timing measurements into a single report and sends it back up to the satellite. Because each coverage zone is in a slightly different position, the timing differences reveal where you are.
This matters as phone makers and carriers push to offer satellite-based 5G and 6G in places where ground towers simply don't exist. Getting location right is a basic requirement for almost everything those networks need to do.
… transmitting, to the satellite, a timing advance report (TAR) medium access control (MAC) control element (CE) including the plurality of TA values of the plurality of NTN cells.
Translation: Your phone sends its timing data back up to space so the network knows where you are.
How the terminal collects and reports TA values
The patent describes a process running on the phone (which the patent calls a "terminal") inside a non-terrestrial network (NTN), meaning a network where the base station is a satellite rather than a ground tower.
The core steps are:
- The phone receives broadcast information about multiple NTN cells (coverage zones served by one or more satellites).
- For each cell, the phone calculates its timing advance (TA) value. TA is the amount by which a phone must shift its transmission earlier to compensate for the travel time of a signal across a very large distance. Because satellites are hundreds to thousands of kilometers up, these delays are much bigger than in normal cell networks.
- The phone packs all those TA values into a single Timing Advance Report MAC Control Element (TAR MAC CE), a standardized message in the 5G protocol stack, and transmits it back to the satellite.
The network can then compare the set of TA values, which together act like triangulation data, to derive the phone's position. The patent also covers the satellite side: how it sends the cell information and how it processes the incoming report.
What this means for satellite 5G and 6G coverage
Satellite connectivity for phones is moving from a niche emergency feature toward everyday coverage in rural and remote regions. For that to work reliably, the network has to know where each device is. Without accurate position data, the satellite cannot correctly schedule transmissions, hand off connections as it moves across the sky, or meet the latency targets that 5G promises.
This patent addresses that positioning gap at the protocol level, meaning it fits inside the existing 5G signaling standard rather than requiring new hardware. Samsung's steady investment in NTN and satellite standards work suggests the company is positioning itself to influence how the next generation of global coverage is built, particularly for the billions of people outside dense urban areas.
This is the 70th Samsung filing we've tracked since May in our 5G and network push, following the smartwatch signal fix and the overheating call fix.
Satellite communication breaks down most badly for the people who need it most: hikers, disaster survivors, and anyone outside a city hoping a call actually connects. When a satellite can't reliably track where a phone is within its coverage zone, the whole system struggles to hand off connections smoothly, and the result is dropped calls and stalled messages at exactly the wrong moments.
Samsung's approach borrows a measurement that mobile networks already make constantly: the tiny delay between a phone sending a signal and a satellite receiving it, which reveals how far apart they are. No new hardware, no new chips, just a software update that puts familiar math to work across satellite distances.
That scope matters. A fix that runs on devices people already own is the difference between a positioning improvement that helps millions and one that helps only future buyers of specialized equipment.
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The drawings
13 drawing sheets from US 2026/0270908 A1 · click any drawing to enlarge
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