Design of Mega-Constellations of LEO Satellites for Positioning

摘要

With the huge potential of the GNSS market and thousands of LEO satellites in space in the future, a novel way is to use these LEO mega-constellations for positioning. In order to fulfil this purpose, the first step is to build a constellation that could be used for both communication and positioning. This paper discusses about some critical issues when designing LEO mega-constellations for positioning. By statistically analyzing from different perspectives, it is shown that in order to get a more uniform distribution of the number of visible satellites along latitude, the combination of different constellations together as a whole could be much more appealing. Meanwhile, in this paper, we did some preliminary work about how to determine some important parameters to get the most suitable combination. The selection of inclinations, orbit heights, number of combined constellations, and ratio of the number of satellites in each constellation will be discussed.