Satellite autonomous orbit determination and navigation in spatial wireless network

This paper presents a novel satellite autonomous navigation and orbit determination method in spatial data chains and network, using wireless measurements of the. distances from each other. The satellite position and velocity in ECEF Cartesian coordinates, as a function of the six Keplerian elements, are used to estimate the instantaneous orbital elements by the extended Kalman filter algorithm. The problems confronted in the spatial network are simply analyzed, such as high data transmission between satellites, accurate wireless distance measurement and network management. In the case of the low Earth orbit satellite (LEO), the estimated position error was controlled to around ten meters. Two important problems to be studied further are discussed.