Performance analysis and simulation of Iridium navigation satellite based on STK

The navigation performance of Iridium satellite is simulated and analyzed based on STK from two aspects—the number of visible satellites and geometric dilution of precision (GDOP). Meanwhile we compare it with GPS and GALILEO system to demonstrate its performance. Experiment shows that the Iridium satellite system has a good coverage merit at two poles, which is even better than that of GPS and GALILEO. However, its global coverage is unstable and GDOP changes sharply from high latitude area to low latitude area which means Iridium satellite cannot orientate or navigate around the equator well. Then we explore the application fields of the Iridium satellite system.