Author:
Müller Lukas,Rothacher Markus,Soja Benedikt
Abstract
AbstractLarge constellations of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites equipped with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers open the possibility of forming a dense and homogeneous GNSS network in space, covering the entire Earth. Based on simulations, this study investigates how geodetic Earth observation could benefit from this development. In the first part, we compare the effects of different processing strategies, parameterizations and simulated errors. The results show that for a large number and a uniform distribution of satellites in a constellation, GNSS network (double-difference) processing can improve LEO orbit determination compared to a single-satellite (zero-difference) processing, provided that the integer ambiguities have been correctly resolved. In the second part of this study, we demonstrate that in a LEO constellation with 36 uniformly distributed satellites, an accuracy of about 1 cm (3D RMS) for the a-priori LEO orbits and about 3 cm for the GNSS orbits is required to achieve the sufficient ambiguity-fixing rate necessary to take full advantage of the double-difference processing.
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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