Abstract
Acquisition strategies for delta differential one-way range measurements are designed for determining highly elliptical Earth orbits. The mission orbit for the U.S. Charged Composition Explorer spacecraft of the international Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers serves to illustrate these acquisition techniques. The study assumes intercontinental baselines formed by Deep Space Network antennas at Goldstone, Canberra, and Madrid. The best performing strategy employs data spanning baseline view periods covering both inbound and outbound legs near the same orbit periapse. Rapidly changing viewing geometry yields both angular position and velocity information but frequently imposes the need for a different reference quasar for each observation. Although limited by an S-band transponder and a small bandwidth, the addition of delta differential one-way range to coherent Doppler and range improves apogee position accuracy by more than an order of magnitude. The measurement noise, highly dependent on acquisition geometry, varies several orders of magnitude across the baseline view periods primarily due to parallax. Careful selection of observation times minimizes the geometric influence on data noise. Additional measurement accuracy improvements, possible with dual frequency calibration, increased spanned bandwidth, and water vapor radiometry, are presented for comparison. Quasar position uncertainties then dominate the measurement noise.
Published Version
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