Analysis of Precise Orbit Determination of BDS-3 MEO and IGSO Satellites Based on Several Dual-Frequency Measurement Combinations

Abstract

The Chinese BeiDou-3 navigation satellite system (BDS-3) is capable of transmitting both old B1I, B3I signals and new B1C, B2a, B2b signals. Current BDS-3 precise orbits are generally calculated using a B1I/B3I combination considering overlap with the BeiDou-2 navigation satellite system (BDS-2). In this contribution, the observation quality of BDS-3 medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites and inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) satellites are analyzed based on three aspects, i.e., carrier to noise ratio (C/N0), pseudo-range noise and pseudo-range multipath (MP). The C/N0 of the MEO satellite is 2~3 dB higher than that of the IGSO satellite at the same elevation angle. Meanwhile, the order of the Root Mean Square (RMS) values of both pseudo-range noise and MP is B1I < B1C < B3I < B2a ≈ B2b. Three kinds of combinations, i.e., B1CB2a, B1CB2b and B1IB3I, are selected for the BDS-3 precise orbit determination (POD) experiment. Orbits are assessed by the orbit-only signal-in-space range error (SISRE) computed between pairs of the three kinds of combinations in this contribution, CODE and GFZ final orbits. Orbit-only SISRE assessment shows that B1CB2a/CODE, B1CB2b/CODE, B1CB2a/GFZ and B1CB2b/GFZ are at the same level with CODE/GFZ, and the orbit-only SISRE is at the level of 5 cm for MEOs and 9 cm for IGSOs, respectively. Meanwhile, B1IB3I/CODE and B1IB3I/GFZ are about 1–2 cm worse. Inter-solution comparison between B1CB2a, B1CB2b and B1IB3I also indicate that B1CB2a and B1CB2b have good consistency, while B1IB3I shows poor performance. Satellite laser ranging (SLR) residuals indicate that the mean RMS is 3–4 cm for the four BDS-3 MEOs for CODE final orbit, GFZ final orbit, B1CB2a and B1CB2b combinations, while the mean RMS value for B1IB3I combination is a few millimeters worse, at approximately 4–5 cm.