Enhancing Navigation Accuracy through Cooperative Satellite Networks

The rapid increase of satellites in orbit and the growth of satellite constellations has brought up the need for autonomous operations. The concept of Cooperative Satellite Networks (CSN), a decentralized network enabling satellites to collaborate and share resources, has the potential for enhancing navigation accuracy by optimizing the satellite architecture and, thus, the GDOP. This paper investigates how the satellite architecture parameters and receiver position influence the Geometirc Dilution of Precision (GDOP) and draws initial conclusions on how CSN can optimize the constellation geometry to enhance navigation accuracy. Different satellite architectures were simulated with varying numbers of satellites, orbital planes, altitudes, and inclination angles. The GDOP analysis was conducted for receivers with diverse elevation constraints located at the Equator and Poles. Throughout those GDOP simulations, key trends were identified, which demonstrate how the satellite architecture influences the GDOP values. Increasing the number of satellites generally improves the GDOP. However, the rate of improvement diminishes with an increasing number of satellites, leading to convergence of the GDOP. Satellite architectures with higher altitudes achieve better GDOP values and converge faster with increasing numbers of satellites. The receiver locations and elevation constraints significantly impact the GDOP performance with lower elevation cut-off angles, resulting in better GDOP values. However, in specific scenarios, such as three-plane Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations, exceptionally high GDOP results are observed due to unfavorable satellite geometries where all satellites are positioned in one plane. The inherent diversity of CSN, such as combining LEO and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites, has the potential to mitigate these challenges and achieve more favorable geometries. These findings are crucial for the development of a reward function to enable the efficient distribution of navigation tasks in a CSN. Therefore, this paper lays the foundation for autonomous satellite networks to enhance navigation accuracy.     «

The rapid increase of satellites in orbit and the growth of satellite constellations has brought up the need for autonomous operations. The concept of Cooperative Satellite Networks (CSN), a decentralized network enabling satellites to collaborate and share resources, has the potential for enhancing navigation accuracy by optimizing the satellite architecture and, thus, the GDOP. This paper investigates how the satellite architecture parameters and receiver position influence the Geometirc Dilut...     »