Magnetometer-Based Orbit Determination via Fast Reconstruction of Three-Dimensional Decoupled Geomagnetic Field Model

Abstract

In this paper, magnetometer-based orbit determination via the fast reconstruction of a 3-D decoupled geomagnetic field (TDGF) model is examined. For the TDGF model, the three components of the geomagnetic field vector at a certain point are calculated separately with three different independent sets of Gauss coefficients rather than one identical set. The fast reconstruction algorithm is based on a recursive least-squares algorithm with a low computational burden. According to the orbit determination accuracy requirements for near-Earth satellites with communication systems that must be operational to update the TDGF model, the on-orbit model update interval can be appropriately selected so that the orbit determination accuracy can be effectively maintained. The simulation results of real flight data from magnetic survey satellites and simulated data show that the robustness of the proposed algorithm for different values of the measurement noise covariance matrices makes the algorithm more practical and that the position estimation error achieved by the proposed algorithm can meet the requirements of low- and medium-precision missions for near-Earth micro- and nanosatellites. In this way, both the autonomy and the orbit determination accuracy of satellites are considered simultaneously at the expense of some unnecessary autonomous capabilities for satellite tasks.