Numerical method for rapidly determining satellite-satellite and satellite-ground station in-view periods

An algorithm is developed in this paper which finds, for low eccentricity satellite orbits, the rise and set times of in-view periods for satellite-satellite and satellite-ground station comparisons which is much faster than comparable brute force methods. The method of the algorithm consists of finding the period, P, of the visibility function, v, and stepping through time in fractions of P to locate rise and set times. This procedure is continued until all in-view periods are found. Numerical tests show that the algorithm has a 99.99% success rate for finding in-view periods for both spherical-earth and ohlate-earth gravity models with a 95% decrease in computer time over the brute force method. A further test shows the potential for success of the oblate-earth version in an operational environment.