Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites

With thousands of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to be launched in the near future, LEO mega-constellations are supposed to significantly change the positioning and navigation service for ground users. The goal of this contribution is to suggest and discuss the feasibility of possible procedures t...

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Main Authors: Wang, Kan, El-Mowafy, Ahmed
Format: Journal Article
Published: MDPI 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP190102444
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/81429
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author Wang, Kan
El-Mowafy, Ahmed
author_facet Wang, Kan
El-Mowafy, Ahmed
author_sort Wang, Kan
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description With thousands of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to be launched in the near future, LEO mega-constellations are supposed to significantly change the positioning and navigation service for ground users. The goal of this contribution is to suggest and discuss the feasibility of possible procedures to generate the LEO orbital products at two accuracy levels to facilitate different positioning methods—i.e., Level A orbits with meter-level accuracy as LEO-specific broadcast ephemeris, and Level B orbits with an accuracy of centimeters as polynomial corrections based on Level A orbits. Real data of the LEO satellite GRACE FO-1 are used for analyzing the error budgets. For the Level A products, compared to the orbital user range errors (OUREs) of a few centimeters introduced by the ephemeris fitting, it was found that the orbital prediction errors play the dominant role in the total error budget—i.e., at around 0.1, 0.2 and 1 m for prediction intervals of 1, 2 and 6 h, respectively. For the Level B products, the predicted orbits within a short period of up to 60 s have an OURE of a few centimeters, while the polynomial fitting OUREs can be reduced by a few millimeters when increasing the polynomial degree from one to two.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-814292021-01-07T07:46:47Z Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites Wang, Kan El-Mowafy, Ahmed 0909 - Geomatic Engineering With thousands of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to be launched in the near future, LEO mega-constellations are supposed to significantly change the positioning and navigation service for ground users. The goal of this contribution is to suggest and discuss the feasibility of possible procedures to generate the LEO orbital products at two accuracy levels to facilitate different positioning methods—i.e., Level A orbits with meter-level accuracy as LEO-specific broadcast ephemeris, and Level B orbits with an accuracy of centimeters as polynomial corrections based on Level A orbits. Real data of the LEO satellite GRACE FO-1 are used for analyzing the error budgets. For the Level A products, compared to the orbital user range errors (OUREs) of a few centimeters introduced by the ephemeris fitting, it was found that the orbital prediction errors play the dominant role in the total error budget—i.e., at around 0.1, 0.2 and 1 m for prediction intervals of 1, 2 and 6 h, respectively. For the Level B products, the predicted orbits within a short period of up to 60 s have an OURE of a few centimeters, while the polynomial fitting OUREs can be reduced by a few millimeters when increasing the polynomial degree from one to two. 2020 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/81429 10.3390/s20205806 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP190102444 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MDPI fulltext
spellingShingle 0909 - Geomatic Engineering
Wang, Kan
El-Mowafy, Ahmed
Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites
title Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites
title_full Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites
title_fullStr Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites
title_full_unstemmed Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites
title_short Proposed Orbital Products for Positioning Using Mega-Constellation LEO Satellites
title_sort proposed orbital products for positioning using mega-constellation leo satellites
topic 0909 - Geomatic Engineering
url http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP190102444
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/81429