Performance of BeiDou-3 Satellites: Signal Quality Analysis and Precise Orbit Determination

Abstract

A new generation of satellites aimed for the BeiDou-3 global positioning system (BDS-3) has recently been launched. These satellites will play a crucial role in its globalization process. The performance of the BDS-3 experimental satellites has been addressed in previous works. However, performance analysis of the orbits of BDS-3 satellites is still lacking. Using the observation data of the B1I and B3I frequency signals across different stations, this paper provides quality analysis, precise orbit determination (POD), and orbit comparison. The results presented here show that the ranging accuracy of BDS-3 is superior to that of the BeiDou-2 system (BDS-2). The satellite-induced code bias of BDS-2 satellite is not obvious on BDS-3 satellite. The orbit accuracy of BDS-3 satellite is superior to the BDS-2 satellite. The average three-dimensional root-mean-square error (RMS) of two-day overlapping arcs for BDS-3 satellite orbits is within 0.1 m, and the satellite laser ranging (SLR) validation reports that the orbit radial-track is within 6 cm.