Autonomous Orbit Determination Method Based on Inter-satellite Doppler Measurement

Abstract

The autonomous orbit determination of satellite is the premise and the important guarantee of the satellite system to accomplish many space missions, and it is also an important guarantee to improve the security of the satellite system, especially during the wartime. There are many methods for satellite autonomous orbit determination. Since the relative motion of two satellites will produce Doppler Effect, this paper attempts to study the autonomous orbit determination method based on inter-satellite Doppler measurement. First, the autonomous orbit satellite system is established by STK simulation, and the satellite orbit data are generated as the reference orbit of the autonomous orbit. According to the extended Kalman filter theory, an autonomous orbit determination simulation platform is built. The experimental results show that when the observation error is random noise on the order of 0.001 m/s, the URE of orbit determination result is decimeter for 7 days; when the sinusoidal amplitude error of the reference satellite R, T, and N direction is 0.5, 1.0, and 1.0 m, the MEO satellite orbit determination URE is decimeter and the GEO satellite fixed rail URE is at meter level, which proves that using the inter satellite Doppler shift as the measurement of autonomous orbit determination is feasible for medium and high orbit satellite.