Constellation Optimization for Low-Earth-Orbit-Based Positioning Services in African Region

Abstract

Affordable positioning technologies make it possible for more stakeholders to access and utilize advanced navigation and tracking systems, crucial for economic development; in particular, in African region there is a significant potential of emerging positioning-based services to support the developments of essential infrastructure such as transportation networks, water access, or agricultural systems. Thus, the study of novel low-cost positioning solutions is a vital component of economic growth and progress. Recently, Low Earth Orbit - Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (LEO-PNT) solutions have gained significant interest in the research community, with several studies dedicated to LEO-constellation optimization for standalone LEO-PNT systems. Until now, most of the proposed LEO-PNT constellations, with the exception of Iridium Next, have typically hundreds of satellites in their constellation, thus requiring significant costs in deployment and maintenance of such constellations. In this paper, we propose three new LEO-PNT constellations with 90 to 102 satellites in orbit, which are optimized in the African region according to a multi-objective optimization problem, with PNT targets in mind, and which can reach positioning performances - in terms of coverage, carrier-to-noise ratios, and dilution of precision - comparable with those of much larger LEO constellations.