LEO satellites Based Doppler Positioning Using Distributed nonlinear Estimation

Abstract

Abstract This paper addresses an original problem of Position Determination based on spacecraft’s signal of opportunity in uncovered Radar areas such as oceanic regions, north regions and deserts. How to maintain tracking information of airlines especially during distress and emergency? to achieve that, a new design for Search and Rescue (SAR) positioning information is developed. Position and speed of the target are estimated based on distributed Doppler information fusion from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. In this paper, Iridium Next LEO constellation is considered as an emerging technology, and privileged for search and rescue applications. Simulations based on experimental data collection demonstrated very good performances. The new Position Determination architecture requires nonlinear least square and filtering algorithms based on Lederberg-Marquart (LM) and extended Kalman filter (EKF). A first experimental and theoretical results show very promising results for position determination using Doppler shift estimation and analysis.