Study on Optimal Broadcast Ephemeris Parameters for GEO/IGSO Navigation Satellites

Abstract

This paper proposes new sets of suitable broadcast ephemeris parameters for geosynchronous (GEO) and inclined geosynchronous (IGSO) navigation satellites (NSs). Despite the increasing number of GEO and IGSO NSs, global positioning system (GPS)-type ephemeris parameters are still widely used for them. In an effort to provide higher fit accuracy, we analyze a variety of broadcast ephemeris parameters for GEO and IGSO satellites along with their orbital characteristics and propose optimal sets of parameters. Nonsingular elements and orbital plane rotation are adopted for alleviating/avoiding the singularity issues of GEO satellites. On the basis of 16 parameters of GPS LNAV, we add one to four parameters out of 28 correction ones to determine optimal sets of ephemeris parameters providing higher accuracy. All possible parameter sets are tested with the least-square curve fit for four BeiDou GEOs and six BeiDou IGSOs. Their fit accuracies are compared to determine the optimal broadcast ephemeris parameters that provide minimum fit errors. The set of optimal ephemeris parameters depends on the type of orbit. User range error (URE) accuracies of the proposed optimal ephemeris parameters ensure results within 2.4 cm for IGSO and 3.8 cm for GEO NSs. Moreover, the experimental results present common parameter sets for both IGSO and GEO for compatibility and uniformity. Compared with four conventional/well-known sets of ephemeris parameters for BeiDou, our proposed parameters can enhance accuracies of up to 34.5% in terms of URE. We also apply the proposed optimal parameter sets to one GEO and three IGSO satellites of QZSS. The effects of fitting intervals, number of parameters, total bits, and orbit types on the fit accuracy are addressed in detail.