Robustifying position and velocity references for communication satellites by short-arc filtering

A fundamental challenge in synchronized space mobile communication networks is to calibrate uplink time and frequency offset brought by rapid relative movement of a communication satellite and its ground terminals, a key step in addressing this problem is to predict satellite position and velocity according to the historical position, velocity and time (PVT) given by a space-borne GNSS receiver onboard. However, the PVT quality of a space-borne GNSS receiver varies with the availability of tracked navigational space vehicles, and intermittently suffers big outliers especially when the number of navigational space vehicles in view are not enough. In this work, we propose an algorithm for robustifying position and velocity references of communication satellites by short-arc filtering. Simulations are conducted with real in orbit GNSS data of LING QIAO, and the results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve quality of the final position and velocity used for uplink time and frequency calibration.