Precise Orbit Determination for Low Earth Orbit Satellites

The precise orbit determination problem is to accurately determine the position and velocity vectors of an orbiting satellite. In this paper we review the general contents of the orbit determination process, with particular emphasis on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The different orbit determination approaches and the different force models contained within are briefly discussed. The two main estimation techniques, the batch least squares approach and the Kalman filter, are reviewed and their relative merits discussed. Numerical results are used to consider the impact of different modeling errors on the final orbit accuracy, in addition to errors due to the nature of near real-time processing conditions.