Remote sensing polar orbiting satellites tracking using orbital elements

摘要

Main parameters to track a remote sensing polar orbiting satellite are satellite's rising time, setting time, overhead time, visibility duration and maximum elevation angle indicating the closeness of the satellite path above the station. Since direct calculation of the parameters is complicated and time consuming, a look up table for satellite tracking is constructed in this study. This solution provides fast access to the required tracking parameters in addition to overcoming the problem of direct calculation of required parameters. The look up table construction is performed in two stages. In the first stage, orbital elements are used to determine the satellite position using a keplerian orbit model. At this stage, the visibility duration is divided into small equally spaced time intervals. Then, satellite position is determined using orbital elements at the start of any time interval within the visibility duration. The second stage is involved with the calculation of pointing parameters from the ground station antenna to the satellite position. The look up table which contains zenith and azimuth angles as pointing parameters versus time is used directly by the receiving antenna servo motors to track the satellite. The proposed polar orbiting satellite tracking procedure has been successfully tested on NOAA satellite for AVHRR data acquisition. The proposed algorithm based on its simplicity has shown sufficient accuracy at much higher implementation speed compared with other methods.