Performance assessment of real-time orbit determination for the Haiyang-2D using onboard BDS-3/GPS observations

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers equipped on the Haiyang-2D (HY-2D) satellite is capable of tracking the signals of both the third generation of BeiDou satellite navigation System (BDS-3) and the Global Positioning System (GPS), which make it feasible to assess the performance of real-time orbit determination (RTOD) for the HY-2D using onboard GNSS observations. In this study, the achievable accuracy and convergence time of RTOD for the HY-2D using onboard BDS-3 and GPS observations are analyzed. Benefiting from the binary-offset-carrier (BOC) modulation, the BDS-3 C1X signal includes less noise than the GPS C1C signal, which has the same signal frequency and chipping rate. The root mean squares (RMS) of the noises of C1X and C1C code measurements are 0.579 m and 1.636 m, respectively. Thanks to a ten-times higher chipping rate, the code measurements of BDS-3 C5P, GPS C1W and C2W are less noisy. The RMS of code noises of BDS-3 C5P, GPS C1W, and C2W are 0.044 m, 0.386 m, and 0.272 m, respectively. For the HY-2D orbit, the three-dimensional (3D) and radial accuracies can reach 31.8 cm and 7.5 cm with only BDS-3 observations, around 50 % better than the corresponding accuracies with GPS. Better performance of the BDS-3 in RTOD for the HY-2D is attributed to the high quality of its broadcast ephemeris. When random parameters are used to absorb ephemeris errors, substantial improvement is seen in the accuracy of HY-2D orbit with either BDS-3 or GPS. The 3D RMS of HY-2D orbit errors with BDS-3 and GPS are enhanced to 23.1 cm and 33.6 cm, and the RMS of the radial components are improved to 6.1 cm and 13.3 cm, respectively. The convergence time is 41.6 and 75.5 min for the RTOD with BDS-3 and GPS, while it is reduced to 39.2 and 27.4 min after the broadcast ephemeris errors are absorbed by random parameters. Overall, the achievable accuracy of RTOD with BDS-3 reaches decimeter level, which is even better than that with GPS, making real-time navigation using onboard BDS-3 observations a feasible choice for future remote sensing missions.     

BDS-3多种授时方法精度试验及比较分析

北斗卫星导航系统(BDS)本质上是一个高精度时间空间信息服务系统,是我国 自主运行的重要空间基础设施.BDS-3已于2020年7月正式开通,向广大用户提供RNSS、SBAS、RDSS单向和RDSS双向等多种授时服务.针对BDS-3提供的各种授时服务进行了简要介绍,详细讨论了各种授时方法,并利用实测数据进行了试验验证和比较分析.结果表明,BDS-3授时服务精度全部优于公布的指标要求,其中精度最高的SBAS授时方法精度可达2ns左右,RDSS双向授时精度和RNSS授时精度相当,达到9ns左右,RDSS单向授时精度最差,在15～30ns左右.     

敏捷SAR卫星平台载荷一体化控制方法研究

面向具备波束指向捷变能力的小型化敏捷合成孔径雷达(SAR)卫星成像需求,提出了通过平台姿态敏捷机动和载荷波束捷变扫描一体化控制实现条带成像、多条带拼接成像、滑动聚束成像等传统成像模式的方法。针对配合成像过程提出的大角度机动和高精度高稳定度连续指向跟踪控制要求,采用5个单框架控制力矩陀螺(SGCMG)组成的"五面锥"构形控制力矩陀螺群作为执行机构,设计了基于姿态四元数和角速度反馈的改进型递阶饱和控制器,实现了平台的敏捷机动和对目标的稳定跟踪指向。数学仿真结果表明:该控制系统有效可行。     

Precise orbit determination and baseline consistency assessment for Swarm constellation

Precise orbit determination (POD) and precise baseline determination (PBD) of Swarm satellites with 4 years of data are investigated. Ambiguity resolution (AR) plays a crucial role in achieving the best orbit accuracy. Swarm POD and PBD based on single difference (SD) AR and traditional double difference (DD) AR methods are explored separately. Swarm antenna phase center variation (PCV) corrections are developed to further improve the orbit determination accuracy. The code multipath of C1C, C1W and C2W observations is first evaluated and clear variations in code noise related to different receiver settings are observed. Carrier phase residuals of different time periods and different loop tracking settings of receiver are studied to explore the effect of ionospheric scintillation on POD. The reduction of residuals in the polar and geomagnetic equator regions confirms the positive impact of the updated carrier tracking loops (TLs) on POD performance. The SD AR orbits and orbits with float ambiguity (FA) are compared with the Swarm precise science orbits (PSOs). An average improvement of 27 %, 4 % and 16 % is gained in along-track, cross-track and radial directions by fixing the ambiguity to integer. For Swarm-A/B and Swarm-B/C formations, specific days are selected to perform the DD AR-based POD during which the average distance of the formation satellites is less than 5000 km. Satellite laser ranging (SLR) observations are employed to validate the performance of FA, SD AR and DD AR orbits. The consistency between the SD AR orbits and SLR data is at a level of 10 mm which shows an improvement of 25 % when comparing with the FA results. An SLR residuals reduction of 15 % is also achieved by the DD AR solution for the selected days. Precise relative navigation is also an essential aspect for spacecraft formation flying missions. The closure error method is proposed to evaluate the baseline precision in three dimensions. A baseline precision of 1–3 mm for Swarm-A/C formation and 3–5 mm for Swarm-A/B and Swarm-B/C satellite pairs is verified by both the consistency check and closure error method.     

Precise orbit determination for TH02-02 satellites based on BDS3 and GPS observations

The Tianhui-2 02 (TH02-02) satellite formation, as a supplement to the microwave mapping satellite system Tianhui-2 01 (TH02-01), is the first Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) satellite formation-flying system that supports the tracking of BeiDou global navigation Satellite system (BDS3) new B1C and B2a signals. Meanwhile, the twin TH02-02 satellites also support the tracking of Global Positioning System (GPS) L1&L2 and BDS B1I&B3I signals. As the spaceborne receiver employs two independent boards to track the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellites, we design an orbit determination strategy by estimating independent receiver clock offsets epoch by epoch for each GNSS to realize the multi-GNSS data fusion from different boards. The performance of the spaceborne receiver is evaluated and the contribution of BDS3 to the kinematic and reduced-dynamic Precise Orbit Determination (POD) of TH02-02 satellites is investigated. The tracking data onboard shows that the average number of available BDS3 and GPS satellites are 8.7 and 9.1, respectively. The carrier-to-noise ratio and carrier phase noise of BDS3 B1C and B2a signals are comparable to those of GPS. However, strong azimuth-related systematic biases are recognized in the pseudorange multipath errors of B1C and B3I. The pseudorange noise of BDS3 signals is better than that of GPS after eliminating the multipath errors from specific signals. Taking the GPS-based reduced-dynamic orbit with single-receiver ambiguity fixing technique as a reference, the results of BDS3-only and BDS3 + GPS combined POD are assessed. The Root Mean Square (RMS) of orbit comparison of BDS3-based kinematic and reduced-dynamic POD with reference orbit are better than 7 cm and 3 cm in three-Dimensional direction (3D). The POD performance based on B1C&B2a data is comparable to that based on B1I&B3I. The precision of BDS3 + GPS combined kinematic orbit can reach up to 3 cm (3D RMS), which has a more than 25% improvement relative to the GPS-only solution. In addition, the consistency between the BDS3 + GPS combined reduced-dynamic orbit and the GPS-based ambiguity-fixed orbit is better than 1.5 cm (3D RMS).     

The adaptive Gaussian mixtures unscented Kalman filter for attitude determination using light curves

The Adaptive Gaussian Mixtures Unscented Kalman Filter (AGMUKF) is introduced to estimate the attitude of a Resident Space Object using light curves. This filter models the state probability density function as a Gaussian Mixture. This enables to capture the non-linearities of the light-curve measurement model. A non-linearity index is used to refine the mixture when necessary, and individual Gaussian kernels are merged back together when their relative distance is below a certain threshold. A conventional attitude Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) is used to propagate and update each kernel. The AGMUKF efficiently maintains the mixture population as low as possible, while still being able to represent non-symmetric, multimodal, arbitrarily complex distributions. Therefore, it is presented as a promising alternative to Particle-Filter-based implementations, the current state of the art used in sequential attitude estimation from light curves. The non-linearity index has been used to show that the measurement model is the main contributor to the system non-linearity. Results have demonstrated the superiority of the AGMUKF w.r.t. the UKF for attitude determination, and that it can converge for high initial state uncertainty cases, successfully capturing the non-Gaussian probability distribution of the state.     

Particle filter-based real-time phase line bias estimation for GNSS-based attitude determination with common-clock receivers

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based attitude determination has been widely adopted in a wide variety of terrestrial, sea, air, and space applications. Recently, the emergence of commercial multi-GNSS common-clock receivers has brought new opportunities for high-precision GNSS-based attitude determination with single-differenced (SD) model. However, the key requirement of using this approach is the accurate estimation of the troublesome line bias (LB) in real-time. In this contribution, we propose a particle filter-based real-time phase LB estimation approach that apply to SD model with single-system single-frequency observations from common-clock receiver. We first analyzed the relationship between the integer ambiguity ratio value and the phase LB. It is proved that the accuracy of a given phase LB value can be qualified by the related ambiguity resolution ratio value, and the normalized ratio value can therefore be used to represent the likelihood function of observations. Then, we presented the particle filter-based real-time phase LB estimation procedure, and assessed its performance using GPS L1/BDS B1I observations from two datasets collected with different types of common-clock receivers in terms of the accuracy and convergence time of phase LB estimation, the computation load, and the positioning and attitude determination accuracy with respect to the double-differenced (DD) model. Experimental results demonstrated that the phase LB could be accurately estimated with short convergence time (generally within 15 epochs). Moreover, compared with the classical DD approach, the particle filter-based SD approach delivers comparable positioning root-mean-square (RMS) errors in the North and East components but significantly smaller RMS errors in the Up component. Accordingly, the achievable yaw accuracy is comparable whereas the pitch accuracy is remarkably improved. The improvements of positioning accuracy in the Up component and pitch accuracy are approximately 35.7 % to 63.7 %, and 33.3 % to 63.1 %, respectively. Additionally, the single-epoch computation time with our particle filter-based SD approach is generally 0.08 s, which is obviously larger than the DD approach but could still meet the requirements of real-time applications below 10 Hz sampling.     

梦天实验舱初始轨道快速计算策略与分析

初始轨道是航天器入轨评价的关键判据，快速准确计算初始轨道可在入轨异常时为应急救生控制赢得时间。针对传统初始轨道计算方法时间与精度不能兼顾的问题，设计了初始轨道快速计算策略，根据运载火箭加速度变化率来判断舱箭分离时间，采用基于动力学约束的实时轨道滑动批处理方法累积超短弧分离后数据计算初始轨道，对利用各种数据源确定的多组初始轨道进行逻辑优选判断。通过梦天试验舱仿真数据验证表明:使用该策略计算初始轨道，可达到事后精密定轨同等精度，计算时间控制在1 min以内，时效性远超事后精密轨道确定方法。     

船用低成本GNSS测向系统研究

GNSS导航星座主要由GPS、GLONASS、Galileo、BDS四大系统卫星组成,到2020年,用户有望同时观测到40多颗导航卫星,大幅提升导航性能的同时,也扩展了其应用领域。针对靶船、渔船对航向测量的需求,基于GNSS接收机应用现状,设计了低成本GNSS测向系统,使用2块Ublox LEA-M8T模块和STM32F407处理器搭建原理样机硬件平台,开展基于Kalman滤波器的载波相位差分姿态测量算法研究和基于Kalman滤波器的伪距差分姿态测量算法研究。静态实验表明,在8.5m基线的情况下,航向角测量标准差为0.0396°,俯仰角测量标准差为0.0889°。使用伪距差分算法,纬度方向上测量误差标准差为0.5923m,经度方向上测量误差标准差为0.4609m,高度方向上测量误差标准差为1.0766m。     

一种提高GNSS测速精度的自适应Kalman滤波算法

在卫星导航系统动态定位中,采用基于瞬时多普勒观测量的最小二乘法确定速度,当载体高机动时,多普勒误差迅速增大,从而导致测速精度大幅度降低。针对该问题,提出一种同时实现动态模型自适应修正和观测模型自适应更新的Kalman滤波算法。算法采用滑动窗方式来建立实时更新的动态模型参数,使当前统计模型自适应地跟踪载体的动态特性。此外,算法提出观测模型的自适应更新方法,通过设置载体状态判决门限,高、中机动时仅进行受动态应力影响小的伪距更新,低机动下添加精度较高的伪距率更新。通过Sprient GSS8000模拟器产生的动态场景验证表明,相对于最小二乘法和常规Kalman滤波算法,提出的自适应Kalman滤波算法能够全面提高载体在多种运动状态下的测速精度。