LEO Onboard Real-Time Orbit Determination Using GPS/BDS Data with an Optimal Stochastic Model

The advancements of Earth observations, remote sensing, communications and navigation augmentation based on low Earth orbit (LEO) platforms present strong requirements for accurate, real-time and autonomous navigation of LEO satellites. Precise onboard real-time orbit determination (RTOD) using the space-borne data of multiple global navigation satellite systems (multi-GNSS) becomes practicable along with the availability of multi-GNSS. We study the onboard RTOD algorithm and experiments by using America's Global Positioning System (GPS) and China's regional BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-2) space-borne data of the FengYun-3C satellite. A new pseudo-ambiguity parameter, which combines the constant phase ambiguity, the orbit and clock offset error of the GPS/BDS broadcast ephemeris in the line-of-sight (LOS), is defined and estimated in order to reduce the negative effect of the LOS error on onboard RTOD. The analyses on the variation of the LOS error in the GPS/BDS broadcast ephemeris indicate that the pseudo-ambiguity parameter could be modeled as a random walk, and the setting of the power spectral density in the random walk model decides whether the pseudo-ambiguity can be estimated reasonably and the LOS error could be reduced or not. For different types of GPS/BDS satellites, the LOS errors show different variation characteristics, so the power spectral density should be set separately and differently. A numerical search approach is presented in this paper to find the optimal setting of the power spectral density for each type of GPS/BDS satellite by a series of tests. Based on the optimal stochastic model, a 3-dimensional (3D) real-time orbit accuracy of 0.7-2.0 m for position and 0.7-1.7 mm/s for velocity could be achieved only with dual-frequency BDS measurements and the broadcast ephemeris, while a notably superior orbit accuracy of 0.3-0.5 m for position and 0.3-0.5 mm/s for velocity is achievable using dual-frequency GPS/BDS measurements, due to the absorption effect of the estimated pseudo-ambiguity on the LOS error of the GPS/BDS broadcast ephemeris. Compared to using GPS-alone data, the GPS/BDS fusion only marginally improves the onboard RTOD orbit accuracy by about 1-3 cm, but the inclusion of BDS satellites increases the number of the tracked GNSS satellites and thus speeds up the convergence of the filter. Furthermore, the GPS/BDS fusion could help suppress the local orbit errors, ensure the orbit accuracy and improve the reliability and availability of the onboard RTOD when fewer GPS satellites are tracked in some anomalous arcs.