Orbit determination of continuous and sporadic signals.

With increasing popularity in CubeSat technologies, it has gotten ever so important to have low-cost systems that complement the economical and self-reliant nature of today’s cubesats providers. One of the most important parts of an end to end small satellite business is ground-based tracking. Satellite tracking provides valuable information on the whereabouts with the use of large antennas and high power transmitters at the price of expense and lead time.

It is thus important to use an alternative tracking method, for example, Doppler Tracking. Doppler based orbit determination uses a doppler frequency shift to convert to a distance problem. Then, orbits may be directly fitted to the Doppler data in a trial and error fashion, but a much less laborious way of computing is to differentially correct an initial approximation of the orbit. This way the cost of the tracking system is kept low because equipment needs beyond the essential receiver are small, at a minimum consisting of an amplifier and a variable oscillator.

So through this project, the goal is to determine the orbit of active satellites using Doppler shift by implementing an algorithm and simulate the final results.