Long-term semi-autonomous orbit determination supported by a few ground stations for navigation constellation

Abstract

In view of the present technology of autonomous orbit determination for navigation satellite constellation (NSC) and the geographical conditions of China, we propose a long-term semi-autonomous orbit determination scheme supported by a few ground stations for NSC in this paper. Since the effect of rotation and translation of the entire constellation relative to the inertial reference frame can bring large errors to the autonomous orbit determination using only cross-link range measurement, a few ground stations (such as 1–3) are supposed to construct the connection between the NSC and the ground. Supported by such a few ground stations, the NSC can realize long-term orbit determination called semi-autonomous orbit determination. The simulation results based on the IGS ephemeris indicate that, for a certain degree of measurement errors, the NSC can maintain its semi-autonomous orbit determination in a period of 240 days within 5 meters of URE.