Litepaper5-minute readNo license required

GPS is fragile.
The fix is already in the air.

Azimuth is a decentralized network of passive receivers that turns existing cell tower, TV, and FM broadcasts into a GPS-independent positioning layer. No transmitting. No licensing. Just listening.

The Problem

The world runs on a signal weaker than Wi-Fi — by a factor of 20 billion

GPS underpins air traffic control, financial timestamps, power grids, autonomous vehicles, and the daily lives of billions. The signal arriving at your phone is 10⁻¹⁶ watts. A $30 jammer kills it across a city block. Spoofing diverts aircraft across hundreds of kilometers. Indoors, it doesn't work at all.

$1B

Estimated daily cost of a US GPS outage (NIST, 2019)

$30

Cost of a jammer that denies GPS across a city block

0%

GPS signal available indoors, underground, or in urban canyons

Why Not Build New Transmitters?

Because regulations and physics won't let you

The obvious alternative — decentralized ground-based transmitters at low frequency — fails on three fronts: regulatory incompatibility across jurisdictions, catastrophic antenna inefficiency at permitted sizes, and positioning precision three orders of magnitude worse than GPS.

Factor

LF Transmitter DePIN

Azimuth (SoOP)

License needed?

Varies by country

Never — receive-only

Works in US + EU?

No — EU bans radiating

Yes — all jurisdictions

Antenna efficiency

~0.1%

>90%

Useful bandwidth

10 kHz

10–400 MHz

Position accuracy

~300 m – 3 km

10–100 m, improving

Nodes for US coverage

4–8 million

~10,000

Key Insight

The signals you need for positioning are already everywhere — cell towers, TV stations, and FM transmitters blanket the world at power levels 60–100 dB stronger than GPS. The missing piece isn't the signal. It's the network of receivers.

How Azimuth Works

Listen. Measure. Position.

Azimuth nodes passively receive timing data from broadcasts already in the air. Multiple signal types are fused for accuracy and coverage no single source can match.

📡

Listen

Your SDR node passively receives LTE, 5G, digital TV, and FM broadcasts — all carrying precise timing information.

⏱️

Measure

The daemon extracts timestamps via TDOA algorithms and builds a radio fingerprint of your location's signal environment.

💰

Earn

Observations flow to the network. Better coverage, more signals, and higher uptime earn more rewards through Proof of Observation.

4

Signal classes: LTE/5G, DTV, FM, LEO satellites

0 W

Transmitted power — purely passive, zero interference

Jurisdictions where receive-only is legal (all of them)

Node Tiers

Start with $30. Scale from there.

Four node tiers let you enter at any level — even free. Every tier earns; higher tiers produce higher-quality data and earn proportionally more.

$0

Tier 0 — Mobile

Available

Android Phone

Your phone passively collects cell tower surveys, GNSS measurements, and WiFi signal data. Zero hardware cost — start earning immediately.

$30

Tier 1 — BYOD

RTL-SDR V4 Dongle

Plug into any PC. Install the daemon. Start earning. Covers 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz — enough for LTE, FM, and DTV signals. NTP timing.

~$200

Tier 2 — Dedicated

Coming Soon

GPS-Disciplined Standalone

Purpose-built unit with nanosecond-class timing, outdoor antenna, and 24/7 unattended operation. Higher data quality, higher rewards.

~$500

Tier 3 — Array

Future

Multi-Channel Coherent SDR

5-element antenna array with TDOA + Angle-of-Arrival capability. Interferometric direction-finding. Premium tier rewards.

Token Economy

Earn by observing. Spend by querying.

The Azimuth token connects node operators who generate data with applications that consume it. Proof of Observation rewards useful work — real radio measurements that make the network more accurate.

Earn

Node operators earn tokens for verified signal observations. Rewards scale with coverage value, signal diversity, timing quality, and uptime.

Spend

Apps query the network for positioning fixes, radio environment maps, GNSS integrity monitoring, and historical signal data.

Nodes in underserved areas earn more — your value to the network is defined by where you are, not just what hardware you run. Unlike storage or bandwidth DePINs, positioning nodes are geographically irreplaceable.

The signals are already there.
Azimuth listens.

All you need is an RTL-SDR dongle and a computer.