Relativistic positioning: including the influence of the gravitational action of the Sun and the Moon and the Earth's oblateness on Galileo satellites

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the impact of gravitational influences from the Sun, Moon, and Earth's oblateness on the accuracy of Galileo satellite positioning within a relativistic framework, improving error estimation in satellite-based navigation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of satellite orbit perturbations considering multiple gravitational effects within the Relativistic Positioning Systems framework, extending previous models.

Findings

Perturbations significantly affect satellite orbit accuracy.

Inclusion of Sun, Moon, and Earth's oblateness improves positioning precision.

Error estimates are refined for real-world satellite navigation.

Abstract

Uncertainties in the satellite world lines lead to dominant positioning errors. In the present work, using the approach presented in \cite{neu14}, a new analysis of these errors is developed inside a great region surrounding Earth. This analysis is performed in the framework of the so-called Relativistic Positioning Systems (RPS). Schwarzschild metric is used to describe the satellite orbits corresponding to the Galileo Satellites Constellation. Those orbits are circular with the Earth as their centre. They are defined as the nominal orbits. The satellite orbits are not circular due to the perturbations they have and to achieve a more realistic description such perturbations need to be taken into account. In \cite{neu14} perturbations of the nominal orbits were statistically simulated. Using the formula from \cite{col10a} a user location is determined with the four satellites proper times that the user receives and with the satellite world lines. This formula can be used with any satellite description, although photons need to travel in a Minkowskian space-time. For our purposes, the computation of the photon geodesics in Minkowski space-time is sufficient as demonstrated in \cite{neu16}. The difference of the user position determined with the nominal and the perturbed satellite orbits is computed. This difference is defined as the U-error. Now we compute the perturbed orbits of the satellites considering a metric that takes into account the gravitational effects of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun and also the Earth oblateness...