This thesis studies the orbit prediction and determination methods and proposes an orbit determination technique for low earth-orbit satellites using Global Positioning System(GPS).
perturbation models, propagation technique, and numerical integration methods, which determine the accuracy of prediction, are studied for orbit prediction. Simulation result show that high-order non-symmetric gravity effects can not be neglected for low earth-orbit satellite.
For orbit determination, the GPS measurement is used as the position measurement model. Both the extended Kalman filter and the least-squares method are used for sequential and batch estimation. It is shown that a low earth-orbit satellite equipped with a GPS receiver can obtain the required orbit determination accuracy without any aid of ground tracking station.
