Preliminary orbit determination method of HEO satellite using a single navigation GPS satellite measurements

The autonomous navigation of highly elliptical orbit (HEO) satellites using GPS needed to solve a key problem of the preliminary orbit determination under the condition of only one navigation satellite. The feasibility by using the pseudo-range received from a single navigation satellite was demonstrated, and the limitation of the F.G method for preliminary orbit determination was figured out. An iterative batch method using orbit elements as constrains was proposed to determine the preliminary orbit. This algorithm did not have complex mathematic operation and could avoid the influence of ill-conditioned equation with short arc data by using F.G method. The simulation results show that its positioning bias is about 10 ⁴ m and velocity bias is approximate 10 ⁰ m/s with an acceptable orbit injection errors, and the proposed method using a single navigation satellite measurements could determine the HEO initial orbit credibly.