GEO Satellite Thruster Configuration and Optimization

A thruster configuration and optimization method for GEO satellite is proposed in this paper.All thrusters are installed on the back panel of satellite,which is not only compatible with the design of satellite subdivision structure,but also able to provide a large installation room for the payloads and components carried by the satellite.Chemical thruster and electric thruster were selected because they have complementary advantages and can effectively reduce propellant consumption.The working mode and tasks of the thruster were analyzed in detail for thruster configuration,which was optimized in order to minimize propellant consumption.Lastly,a GEO satellite thruster was configured and optimized using this method,with results showing that the method is feasible and effective,and consequently has value for engineering applications.

Spot beam handover trigger and channel allocation scheme in GEO mobile satellite communication

An effective spot beam handover trigger and channel allocation scheme is proposed for GEO mobile satellite communication based on its characteristic and application. By using both signal strength and terminal location information, necessary handover is triggered promptly and accurately to reduce the negative effect of long signaling delay. Then handover decision is made with the handover queuing and channel allocation strategy. An adaptive channel resource allocation scheme is considered to optimize resource utilization with guarantee of emergency communication, which is significant for emergency rescue and disaster relief. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme prevents unnecessary handover effectively and has favorable adaptability to emergent requirement of satellite communication.

A GEO Satellite Position and Beam Features Estimation Method Based on Beam Edge Positions

Constrained by orbital configuration and spectrum sharing,non-geostationary orbit(NGEO)satellites may be interfered when they are in the beam range of geostationary orbit(GEO)satellite.However,it is difficult for NGEO operators to determine the signal source.Herein,we propose a method to locate the GEO signal source and estimate beam features,including beam pointing azimuth,elevation,and beamwidth,by the beam edge positions.We transform this estimation problem into two optimization problems by minimizing the estimation error,and solve both of them through a multi-variable joint iteration method with acceptable computation complexity.Numerical results show that when NGEO satellites pass through the beam twice,the longitude estimation error is about 0.01 degree,and the estimation results will be more and more accurate as the number of passing times increases.Besides,the proposed method is also effective when there are kilometer-level errors in beam edge positions.

Evaluation of strategies for the ultra-rapid orbit prediction of BDS GEO satellites

The quality of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System(BDS)Geostationary Earth Orbit(GEO)ultrarapid products is unsatisfactory because GEO satellites are nearly stationary relative to ground stations.To optimize the quality of these ultra-rapid orbit products,we investigated the effects of the fitting arc length,an a priori Solar-Radiation Pressure(SRP)model,and the along-track empirical acceleration on the prediction of BDS GEO satellite orbits.The predicted orbit arcs of 24-h were evaluated through comparisons with the corresponding observed orbit arc and Satellite Laser Ranging(SLR)observations.In both eclipse and non-eclipse seasons,accuracy of the orbit predictions obtained using a 48-h fitting arc length were better than those obtained using 24-h and 72-h fitting arc lengths.Although the overlapping precision of predicted orbits exhibited no obvious improvement when an a priori SRP model was employed,the systematic bias in the SLR residuals was significantly reduced.Specifically,the mean value of SLR residuals decreased from−0.248 m to−0.024 m during non-eclipse seasons and from−0.333 m to−0.041 m during eclipse seasons,respectively.In addition,when an empirical acceleration in the along-track direction was introduced,the three-Dimensional Root-Mean-Square(3D RMS)of overlapping orbits during eclipse seasons decreased from 2.964 to 1.080 m,which is comparable to that during non-eclipse seasons.Furthermore,the Standard Deviation(STD)of SLR residuals decreased from 0.419 to 0.221 m during eclipse seasons.The analysis of SRP estimates shows that the stability of SRP parameters was significantly enhanced after the introduction of along-track empirical acceleration in eclipse seasons.The optimal BDS GEO ultra-rapid orbit prediction products were yielded by using a 48-h fitting arc length,an a priori SRP model and an along-track empirical acceleration.

U-Net Inspired Deep Neural Network-Based Smoke Plume Detection in Satellite Images

Industrial activities, through the human-induced release of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, have beenidentified as the primary cause of global warming. Accurate and quantitative monitoring of these emissions isessential for a comprehensive understanding of their impact on the Earth’s climate and for effectively enforcingemission regulations at a large scale. This work examines the feasibility of detecting and quantifying industrialsmoke plumes using freely accessible geo-satellite imagery. The existing systemhas so many lagging factors such aslimitations in accuracy, robustness, and efficiency and these factors hinder the effectiveness in supporting timelyresponse to industrial fires. In this work, the utilization of grayscale images is done instead of traditional colorimages for smoke plume detection. The dataset was trained through a ResNet-50 model for classification and aU-Net model for segmentation. The dataset consists of images gathered by European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite constellation from a selection of industrial sites. The acquired images predominantly capture scenesof industrial locations, some of which exhibit active smoke plume emissions. The performance of the abovementionedtechniques and models is represented by their accuracy and IOU (Intersection-over-Union) metric.The images are first trained on the basic RGB images where their respective classification using the ResNet-50model results in an accuracy of 94.4% and segmentation using the U-Net Model with an IOU metric of 0.5 andaccuracy of 94% which leads to the detection of exact patches where the smoke plume has occurred. This work hastrained the classification model on grayscale images achieving a good increase in accuracy of 96.4%.

Orbit determination and prediction for Beidou GEO satellites at the time of the spring/autumn equinox

Geostationary(GEO) satellites form an indispensable component of the constellation of Beidou navigation system(BDS). The ephemerides, or predicted orbits of these GEO satellites(GEOs), are broadcast to positioning, navigation, and timing users. User equivalent ranging error(UERE) based on broadcast message is better than 1.5 m(root formal errors: RMS) for GEO satellites. However, monitoring of UERE indicates that the orbital prediction precision is significantly degraded when the Sun is close to the Earth's equatorial plane(or near spring or autumn Equinox). Error source analysis shows that the complicated solar radiation pressure on satellite buses and the simple box-wing model maybe the major contributor to the deterioration of orbital precision. With the aid of BDS' two-way frequency and time transfer between the GEOs and Beidou time(BDT, that is maintained at the master control station), we propose a new orbit determination strategy, namely three-step approach of the multi-satellite precise orbit determination(MPOD). Pseudo-range(carrier phase) data are transformed to geometric range(biased geometric range) data without clock offsets; and reasonable empirical acceleration parameters are estimated along with orbital elements to account for the error in solar radiation pressure modeling. Experiments with Beidou data show that using the proposed approach, the GEOs' UERE when near the autumn Equinox of 2012 can be improved to 1.3 m from 2.5 m(RMS), and the probability of user equivalent range error(UERE)<2.0 m can be improved from 50% to above 85%.

Dynamic Connectivity in Cislunar Communication Networking Based on Geosynchronous Orbit Relay Satellites

The architecture of cislunar multi-hop communication networks, which focuses on the requirements of lunar full-coverage and continuous cislunar communications, is presented on the basis of Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) satellite network relays. According to the geographical distribution of the forthcoming Chinese Deep Space Measuring and Controlling Network (DSMCN), two networking schemes are proposed and two elevation angle optimization models are established for locating GEO relay satellites. To analyze the dynamic connectivity, a dynamic network model is constructed with respect to the time-varying characteristics of cislunar trunk links. The advantages of the two proposed schemes, in terms of the Connectivity Rate (CR), Interruption Frequency (IF), and Average Length of Connecting Duration (ALCD), are corroborated by several simulations. In the case of the lunar polar orbit constellation case, the gains in the performance of scheme I are observed to be 134.55%, 117.03%, and 217.47% compared with DSMCN for three evaluation indicators, and the gains in the performance of scheme II are observed to be 238. 22%, 240.40%, and 572.71%. The results validate that the connectivity of GEO satellites outperforms that of earth facilities significantly and schemes based on GEO satellite relays are promising options for cislunar multi-hop communication networking.

FY-4 Meteorological Satellite

FY-4 is the second generation of Chinese geostationary satellite for quantitative remote sensing meteorological application. The detection efficiency, spectral bands, spatial and time resolution have been greatly improved with respect to those of first generation, as well as the radiometric calibration and sensitivity. The combination of multichannel detection and vertical sounding was first realized on FY-4, because both the Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager(AGRI) and Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder(GIIRS) are on the same spacecraft. The main performance of the payloads including AGRI, GIIRS and Lightning Mapping Imager, and the spacecraft bus are presented, the performance being equivalent to the level of the third generation meteorological satellites in Europe and USA. The acquiring methods of remote sensing data including multichannel and high precision quantitative observing, imaging collection of the ground and cloud, vertical observation of atmospheric temperature and moisture, lightning imaging observation and space environment detection are shown. Several innovative technologies including high accuracy rotation angle detection and scanning control, high precision calibration, micro vibration suppression, unified reference of platform and payload and on-orbit measurement, real-time image navigation and registration on-orbit were applied in FY-4.

Multipath error detection and correction for GEO/IGSO satellites

Constellations of regional satellite navigation systems are usually constituted of geostationary satellites (GEO) and inclined geostationary satellites (IGSO) for better service availability. Analysis of real data shows that the pseudorange measurements of these two types of satellites contain significant multipath errors and code noise, and the multipath for GEO is extremely serious, which is harmful to system services. In contrast, multipath error of carrier phase measurements is less than 3 cm, which is smaller than the multipath of pseudorange measurements by two orders of magnitude. Using a particular combination of pseudorange and dual-frequency carrier phase measurements, the pseudorange multipath errors are detected, and their time varying features are analyzed. A real-time multipath correction algorithm is proposed in this paper, which is called CNMC (Code Noise and Multipath Correction). The algorithm decreases the influence of the multipath error and therefore ensures the performance of the system. Data processing experiments show that the multipath error level may be reduced from 0.5 m to 0.15 m by using this algorithm, and 60% of GEO multipath errors and 42% of IGSO multipath errors are successfully corrected with CNMC. Positioning experiments are performed with a constellation of 3 GEO plus 3 IGSO satellites. For dual-frequency users the East-West position accuracy is improved from 1.31 m to 0.94 m by using the CNMC algorithm, the South-North position accuracy is improved from 2.62 m to 2.29 m, and the vertical position accuracy is improved from 4.25 m to 3.05 m. After correcting multipath errors, the three-dimensional position accuracy is improved from 5.16 m to 3.94 m.

Mathematical prototypes for collocating geostationary satellites

Collocating geostationary satellites sharing the same position is much demanded for satellite operation recently,the separation strategies are adopted to safeguard the satellites collocated of leaving the relative distance beyond collision with different sets of orbit parameters.This paper presents the mathematical prototypes which establish the allowable relative distance with uncertainty of orbital determination(OD),as well as the orbital element offset for each pair of collocated satellites,and puts forward algorithms to build such relationship to face the challenge of putting three satellites sharing the same position,the algorithms to allocate the longitude,eccentricity and inclination for each satellite are also given to ascertain that the mathematical prototypes are the guide specification to design collocation strategy for geostationary satellites.