Initial results of distributed autonomous orbit determination for Beidou BDS-3 satellites based on inter-satellite link measurements

Autonomous orbit determination (AOD) is the ability of navigation satellites to estimate with accurate satellite orbit parameters using onboard using inter-satellite link (ISL) measurements. To overcome the unobservability of the constellation rotation error in AOD when using only the ISL measurements, the properties that the orbit inclination i\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ i $$\end{document} and the longitude of the ascending node Ω\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \varOmega $$\end{document} of the medium earth orbit (MEO) navigation satellites, which can be predicted with high accuracy over a long time, are explored. This leads to an onboard extended Kalman filter (EKF) where i,Ω\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \left( {i,\varOmega } \right) $$\end{document} are subjected to constraints. Three experiments are carried out to assess the effectiveness of the proposed AOD EKF and analyze the causes of the constellation rotation error by processing 30-day ISL measurements of 18 MEO satellites of BDS-3 in a distributed mode. The results verify that the proposed EKF with i,Ω\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \left( {i,\varOmega } \right) $$\end{document} constraints can resolve the unobservable constellation rotation error issue effectively. When using precise EOP parameters, the 3D orbit errors of BDS-3 AOD in 30 days could be less than 2.30 m. The errors increase to 3.4 m when the predicted EOP parameters are used.