A Conceptual Study of Positioning System for the Geostationary Satellite Autonomous Operation

Even more than 240 commercial geostationary communication satellites currently on orbit at the higher location than the GPS orbit altitude perform their own missions only by the support of the ground segment because of weak visibility from GPS. In addition, the orbit determination accuracy is very low without using two or more dedicated ground tracking antennas in intercontinental ground segment, since the satellite hardly moves with respect to the ground station. In this paper, we propose the GSPS(Geostationary Satellite Positioning System) in circular orbits of two sidereal days period higher than the geosynchronous orbit for orbit determination and autonomous satellite operation. The GSPS is conceived as a ranging system in that unknown positions of a geostationary satellite can be acquired from the known positions of the GSPS satellites. Each GSPS satellite transmits navigation data, clock data, correction data, and geostationary satellite command to control a geostationary satellite.