GDOP-based analysis of suitability of LEO constellations for future satellite-based positioning

Abstract

There are efforts worldwide to build and launch new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for a multitude of communication and remote-sensing applications. The high number of LEO satellites soon to be available, their relative proximity to Earth compared to GNSS satellites, as well as the potential of Doppler-based positioning makes these LEO systems good candidates for future positioning solutions, to complement the existing GNSS and terrestrial navigation. LEO systems for Positioning, Navigation, and Time (PNT), briefly referred to as LEO-PNT, can be built either by reusing the existing constellations as signals of opportunity (SoO), or by building new LEO constellations optimized for the positioning purpose. The goal of this paper is to offer a comprehensive comparison in terms of code-based and Doppler-based Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP) between existing LEO systems and to discuss the optimization steps to follow in building novel LEO-PNT constellations for best positioning performance. We show that existing broadband LEO constellation with thousands or more satellites are good candidates for SoO in positioning and they can offer close to 100% coverage.