Filter Design and Observability Analysis for Autonomous Orbit Determination of DSS with Periodic Measurements

Autonomous orbit determination of the distributed satellite system (DSS), which is responsible to estimate the absolute position and velocity of satellites by the sensors onboard only, is a basic requirement in many space missions. This paper considers a situation in which only limited sensors are working properly in the whole system, extremely speaking, just one relative measurement device remains. The remaining sensor has to measure other satellites in sequence. Under a periodic sequence assumption, the autonomous navigation was modeled as a periodic system to analyze the observability in this extreme situation. The filter of periodic system is presented and two unobservable situations are given.