2024 Volume 2 Article ID: 185
Real-time onboard precise orbit determination (POD) has various potential applications such as formation flying, autonomous rendezvous docking, and advanced autonomy of satellites. However, it has not yet been demonstrated in space. The research about real-time onboard POD using precise point positioning has few examples, especially almost no examples are using MADOCA Real- Time as correction information. In this study, at first, we constructed a GNSS simulator so that we can verify the orbit determination system for any orbit, and then we verified the requirements for high precision orbit determination. The simulation results revealed that the accurate GNSS clock bias information is the most important element for the orbit determination accuracy and that the MADOCA Real-Time can solve this problem. The results have also shown that the quality of the correction and observation information is more important than the precise dynamics model by changing the order of the higher-order gravity terms. This fact leads to a reduction of the onboard computational load. Finally, we also investigated the availability of MADOCA Real-Time for low earth orbit satellites.
