Real-time high-precision joint orbit determination of GPS and LEO using SRIF

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have the advantages of high flight velocity and minimal influence from external environmental factors on onboard observation. Integrating LEO satellite observations with ground observations can improve the accuracy and convergence performance of GPS and LEO real-time orbit determination, which can simultaneously meet the prerequisites for real-time Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services for both GPS and LEO systems. Therefore, this study employs the Square Root Information Filter (SRIF) for GPS and LEO satellites real-time joint orbit determination (RTJOD). Based on observations from eight existing scientific LEO satellites, a detailed study on RTJOD was conducted under two scenarios: one using observations from 100 global stations and the other using observations from 9 regional stations in Australia. The results show that, with 100 global stations, incorporating LEO observations can significantly improve the convergence performance and GPS satellite orbit accuracy. The convergence times in the Along-track, Cross-track, and Radial components are reduced from 3.5, 5.8, and 10.3 h to 0.9, 1.0, and 10.3 h, respectively. The accuracy improves from 5.8, 3.6, and 2.8 to 4.0 cm, 2.5 cm, and 2.5 cm. Additionally, the ambiguity resolution (AR) performance is significantly enhanced. The time required to achieve a 90% narrow-lane ambiguity fixing rate is reduced from 4.9 to 0.7 h. After AR, the orbit accuracy further improves to 3.1 cm, 2.3 cm, and 2.4 cm. In the case of the 9 regional stations in Australia, after incorporating LEO, the orbit accuracy of the float solution after convergence is comparable to that of the 100 global stations without LEO, with accuracies of 6.0, 4.8, and 2.9 cm in the three components. It is important to note that, due to insufficient observations in this case, AR does not result in any further improvement in accuracy. In addition, LEO can achieve orbit determination accuracy better than 5 cm within a short time in both station distribution scenarios. This ensures that RTJOD enables LEO and GPS to generate high-precision real-time orbits simultaneously. Finally, the processing time for each epoch in all scenarios is less than 5 seconds, ensuring that the GPS and LEO RTJOD can provide timely orbit updates.