Orbital Elements Ephemerides and Interfaces Design of LEO Satellites

Abstract

Low earth orbit satellites, with unique advantages, are prosperous types of navigation augmentation satellites for the GNSS satellites constellations. The broadcast ephemeris element needs to be designed as an important index of the augmented LEOs. The GPS ephemerides of 16/18 elements cannot be directly applied to the LEOs because of the poor fitting accuracies in along-track positional component. Besides, the ill-conditioned problem of the normal-matrix exists in fitting algorithm due to the small eccentricity of the LEO orbits. Based on the nonsingular orbital elements, 5 sets of ephemerides with element numbers from 16 to 19 were designed respectively by adding or modifying orbital elements magnifying the along-track and radial positional components. The fitting experiments based on the LEO of 300 to 1500km altitudes show that the fitting UREs of the proposed 16/17/18/18 ^*/19-element ephemerides are better than 10/6/4/5/2.5cm, respectively. According to the dynamical range of the fitting elements, the interfaces were designed for the 5 sets of ephemerides. The effects of data truncation on fitting UREs are at millimeter level. The total bits are 329/343/376/379/396, respectively. 29/15 bits are saved for the 16/17-element ephemerides compared with the GPS16 ephemeris, while 64/61/41 bits can be saved for the 18/18 ^*/19-element ephemerides compared with the GPS18 elements ephemeris.