QZSS Satellite-borne Atomic Clock Performance Evaluation

Abstract

Performance of satellite-borne atomic clock is a critical factor to the availability and precision of global and regional satellite navigation systems. Nonetheless, at present, practical clock performance assessment method is in absence. A space-borne clock performance assessment method is first proposed indexed by maximum clock error, clock rate and clock drift rate, and the performance of QZSS satellite-borne clock is assessed by this method comparing with GPS. Furthermore, the system performance of QZSS is assessed in the aspect of clock data precision in broadcast ephemeris by comparing with the final precise ephemeris. The evaluation result shows that the performance of space-borne clock of QZSS is similar to GPS, and the system performance of QZSS and GPS is also equivalent to each other regarding to the precision of broadcast ephemeris.