Initial results of distributed autonomous orbit determination for Beidou BDS-3 satellites based on inter-satellite link measurements

Autonomous orbit determination (AOD) is the ability of navigation satellites to estimate with accurate satellite orbit parameters using onboard using inter-satellite link (ISL) measurements. To overcome the unobservability of the constellation rotation error in AOD when using only the ISL measurements, the properties that the orbit inclination $$ i $$ and the longitude of the ascending node $$ \varOmega $$ of the medium earth orbit (MEO) navigation satellites, which can be predicted with high accuracy over a long time, are explored. This leads to an onboard extended Kalman filter (EKF) where $$ \left( {i,\varOmega } \right) $$ are subjected to constraints. Three experiments are carried out to assess the effectiveness of the proposed AOD EKF and analyze the causes of the constellation rotation error by processing 30-day ISL measurements of 18 MEO satellites of BDS-3 in a distributed mode. The results verify that the proposed EKF with $$ \left( {i,\varOmega } \right) $$ constraints can resolve the unobservable constellation rotation error issue effectively. When using precise EOP parameters, the 3D orbit errors of BDS-3 AOD in 30 days could be less than 2.30 m. The errors increase to 3.4 m when the predicted EOP parameters are used.