Osculating orbital elements estimation for GNSS-based satellite navigation

The pseudorange and delta-range GNSS measurements are widely used for on-board satellite orbit determination. A point estimate of the satellite state can be obtained from these measurements. Alternatively, through the knowledge of the forces acting on it, a dynamic model of the system can be utilized to obtain better states estimates through the processing of these measurements. This satellite state can be represented by its coordinates of position and velocity, or by the orbital elements that describe its orbit. Unlike previous approaches, in which the mean orbital elements averaged along one orbit are used, in this work a filtering scheme based on the osculating orbital elements is proposed. A comparison is made with the point navigation solution obtained in a simulation scenario with a satellite in a non-circular non-equatorial orbit.