Analysis of BDS-3 Distributed Autonomous Navigation Based on BeiDou System Simulation Platform

Abstract Satellite autonomous navigation is an important function of the BeiDou-3 navigation System (BDS-3). Satellite autonomous navigation means that the navigation satellite uses long-term forecast ephemeris and Inter-Satellite Link (ISL) measurements to determinate its own spatial position and time reference without the support of the ground Operation and Control System (OCS) for a long time to ensure that the navigation system can normally maintain the time and space reference. This paper aims to analyze the feasibility of distributed autonomous navigation algorithms. For the first time, a ground parallel autonomous navigation test system (GPANTS) is built. The performance of distributed autonomous navigation is then analyzed using the two-way ISL ranging of BDS-3 satellites. First, the BDS simulation platform and the GPANTS are introduced. Then, the basic principles of distributed satellite autonomous orbit determination and time synchronization based on ISL measurements are summarized. Preliminary evaluation of the performance of the BDS-3 constellation autonomous navigation service under ideal conditions through simulation data. Then the performance of autonomous navigation for 22 BeiDou-3 satellites using ISL measurements is evaluated. The results show that when satellites operate autonomously for 50 days without the support of any ground station, the User Range Error (URE) of autonomous orbit determination is better than 3m, and the time synchronization accuracy is better than 4ns.