Differential Evolution for Regular Orbit Determination

The precise prediction of future position of satellite depends on the accurate determination of orbit, which is also helpful in performing orbit maneuvers and trajectory correction maneuvers. For estimating the orbit of satellite many methods are being used. Some of the conventional methods are based on (i) Differential Correction (DC) (ii) Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). In this paper, Differential Evolution (DE) is used to determine the orbit. Orbit Determination using DC and EKF requires some initial guess of the state vector to initiate the algorithm, whereas DE does not require an initial guess since a wide range of bounds for the design unknown variables (orbital elements) is sufficient. This technique is uniformly valid for all orbits viz. circular, elliptic or hyperbolic. Simulated observations have been used to demonstrate the performance of the method. The observations are generated by including random noise. The simulation model that generates the observations includes the perturbation due to non-spherical earth up to second zonal harmonic term.