Saturday, 15 August 2009

orbit - Derivation of the formula for longitude of ascending node for a satellite

I've been looking into the document IS-GPS-200H to understand how to calculate satellite location in the ECEF coordinate.



I am having problem understanding the formula to derive Omega, the longitude of the ascending node (LAN) relative to Greenwich at given time t:



Omega=Omega0+left(dotOmegawright)timestkwtimestoe



where:
Omega0:textLANrelativetovernalequinox,atthebeginningoftheweek dotOmega:textangularvelocityforLAN,relativetovernalequinox. w:textangularvelocityofearth,relativetovernalequinox. tk:ttoe toe:textephemerisreferenceepoch 


(and let us denote the beginning of the week as t0 for brevity).



But if I try to work out this from scratch:



  1. At t=t0, LAN was Omega0. But since what we really need is the difference of LAN and longitude of Greenwich, we also need to know w0, the initial longitude of Greenwich at t=t0.
    Omega(t=t0)=Omega0w0

  2. At the ephemeris reference epoch time t=toe, LAN and the earth both rotate with their respective angular momentum and hence:
    Omega(t=toe)=Omega0+w0+(dotOmegaw)timestoe

  3. As time varies from toe to t, again LAN and the earth both rotate with their own respective angular momentum and hence
    Omega(t)=Omega0+w0+(dotOmegaw)timestoe+(dotOmegaw)timestk

    which obviously differs from the right formula by w0+dotOmegatimestoe.

My question is where am I making mistakes/misunderstanding the eqution?
Explain also why we don't need to know w0 or equivalent input, that would be greatly appreciated.

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