Constellation Design Examples

Constellation Design Examples

The first two examples presented here were generated with the Constellation Design - Circular Orbits module. The design requirement was to provide continuous coverage within -70 ..+70 deg latitude at a minimum ground elevation angle of 20 deg. Circular orbits with altitude of 1400 km have been considered in both cases.

Click on highlighted links below to see reports produced by the Coverage Analysis and Constraints Analysis modules.

Coverage Analysis report shows the minimum number of satellites that will be available at all times to each point of the latitude bound at a given elevation angle (20 deg). "P" value in the N field identifies latitude bound of periodic coverage , "N" - latitude bound, all points of which are never covered by the constellation. Constraints Analysis report shows the minimum ground elevation angle which has to be maintained by the generated constellation in order to provide continuous coverage at specified latitudes.

Example 1.

Example 2.

Constellation Parameters	Values
Continuous Coverage Area at a Minimum Elevation Angle of 20^o	-70.75^o.. +70.75^o
Number of Satellites	71
Orbit Inclination (deg)	121.9
Altitude of Perigee (km)	1400.0
Altitude of Apogee (km)	1400.0
Number of Planes	71
Number of Satellites per Plane	1
RAAN Increment (deg)	360.0/71
Phase Increment (deg)	278.873

Constellation Parameters	Values
Continuous Coverage Area at a Minimum Elevation Angle of 20^o	-90.0^o.. +90.0^o
Number of Satellites	70
Orbit Inclination (deg)	88.0
Altitude of Perigee (km)	1400.0
Altitude of Apogee (km)	1400.0
Number of Planes	7
Number of Satellites per Plane	10
RAAN Increment (deg)	27.458
Phase Increment (deg)	17.011

The following two designs were generated using the "Constellation Design - Advanced Options" module. Constellation with circular orbits (example 3) provides continuous coverage with a minimum of four visible satellites to any point on Earth at minimum ground elevation angle of 0^o. Constellation with elliptical orbits (example 4) provides continuous coverage with a minimum of four visible satellites to any point within +20^o..+90^o latitude at minimum ground elevation angle of 0^o.

Example 3.

Example 4.

Constellation Parameters	Values
Number of Satellites	18
Orbit Inclination (deg)	55.0
Altitude of Perigee (km)	8300.0
Altitude of Apogee (km)	8300.0
Number of Planes	3
Number of Satellites per Plane	6
RAAN Increment (deg)	120.0
Phase Increment (deg)	20.0

Constellation Parameters	Values
Number of Satellites	18
Orbit Inclination (deg)	63.4
Altitude of Perigee (km)	1000.0
Altitude of Apogee (km)	7200.0
Number of Planes	18
Argument of Perigee (deg)	270.0
RAAN Increment (deg)	20.0
Phase Increment (sec)	Period/3