TAIC algorithm for the visibility of the elliptical orbits’ satellites

Abstract

The fast algorithm for satellite visibility is very important in many applications, particularly in the real-time simulation environments. In this paper, a novel algorithm, true anomaly iteration compensation (TAIC) algorithm, is proposed to predict the visibility of the elliptical orbits' satellites. A main property of our algorithm is that it could avoid solving the transcendental equation: Kepler Equation, therefore the computation of the algorithm is very small. Furthermore, a compensation method is used to yield more accurate results. The excellent performance of the algorithm is illustrated by the numerical results. For TAIC algorithm, the error of visibility- time is about 0.21% and the error of the entry-access time instant and the exit-access time instant is about 0.79 seconds.