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Orbit and clock analysis of Compass GEO and IGSO satellites

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Abstract

China is currently focussing on the establishment of its own global navigation satellite system called Compass or BeiDou. At present, the Compass constellation provides four usable satellites in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) and five satellites in inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO). Based on a network of six Compass-capable receivers, orbit and clock parameters of these satellites were determined. The orbit consistency is on the 1–2 dm level for the IGSO satellites and on the several decimeter level for the GEO satellites. These values could be confirmed by an independent validation with satellite laser ranging. All Compass clocks show a similar performance but have a slightly lower stability compared to Galileo and the latest generation of GPS satellites. A Compass-only precise point positioning based on the products derived from the six-receiver network provides an accuracy of several centimeters compared to the GPS-only results.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the station operators Shinichi Nakamura (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Noor Raziq (Curtin University, Australia), and Renat Zagretdinov (Kazan Federal University, Russia) for their support. The efforts of the IGS M-GEX campaign (Weber 2012) in providing multi-GNSS data are acknowledged. CHN0 tracking data were kindly provided by Trimble.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Astronomische und Physikalische Geodäsie, Technische Universität München, 80290 , München, Germany

    P. Steigenberger & U. Hugentobler

  2. German Space Operations Center, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, 82230 , Weßling, Germany

    A. Hauschild & O. Montenbruck

Authors
  1. P. Steigenberger
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  2. U. Hugentobler
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  3. A. Hauschild
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  4. O. Montenbruck
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Correspondence to P. Steigenberger.

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Steigenberger, P., Hugentobler, U., Hauschild, A. et al. Orbit and clock analysis of Compass GEO and IGSO satellites. J Geod 87, 515–525 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-013-0625-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-013-0625-4

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