{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,3]],"date-time":"2026-06-03T10:47:09Z","timestamp":1780483629771,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":30,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"11","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,5,27]],"date-time":"2021-05-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1622073600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["62073289"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62073289"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100013145","name":"Primary Research and Development Plan of Zhejiang Province","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["209C05004"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["209C05004"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100013145","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The inter-satellite relative navigation method\u2014based on radio frequency (RF) range and angle measurements\u2014offers good autonomy and high precision, and has been successfully applied to two-satellite formation missions. However, two main challenges occur when this method is applied to multi-microsatellite formations: (i) the implementation difficulty of the inter-satellite RF angle measurement increases significantly as the number of satellites increases; and (ii) there is no high-precision, scalable RF measurement scheme or corresponding multi-satellite relative navigation algorithm that supports multi-satellite formations. Thus, a novel multi-satellite relative navigation scheme based on inter-satellite RF range and angle measurements is proposed. The measurement layer requires only a small number of chief satellites, and a novel distributed multi-satellite range measurement scheme is adopted to meet the scalability requirement. An inter-satellite relative navigation algorithm for multi-satellite formations is also proposed. This algorithm achieves high-precision relative navigation by fusing the algorithm and measurement layers. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme requires only three chief satellites to perform inter-satellite angle measurements. Moreover, with the typical inter-satellite measurement accuracy and an inter-satellite distance of around 1 km, the proposed scheme achieves a multi-satellite relative navigation accuracy of ~30 cm, which is about the same as the relative navigation accuracy of two-satellite formations. Furthermore, decreasing the number of chief satellites only slightly degrades accuracy, thereby significantly reducing the implementation difficulty of multi-satellite RF angle measurements.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s21113725","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,5,27]],"date-time":"2021-05-27T11:07:02Z","timestamp":1622113622000},"page":"3725","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["Multi-Satellite Relative Navigation Scheme for Microsatellites Using Inter-Satellite Radio Frequency Measurements"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"21","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8938-165X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shiming","family":"Mo","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Satellite Research, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8804-9890","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiaojun","family":"Jin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Satellite Research, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chen","family":"Lin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Satellite Research, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wei","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Satellite Research, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhaobin","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Satellite Research, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhonghe","family":"Jin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Satellite Research, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,5,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3027","DOI":"10.3182\/20110828-6-IT-1002.02369","article-title":"Intersatellite Links and Relative Navigation: Pre-conditions for Formation Flights with Pico- and Nanosatellites","volume":"44","author":"Marszalek","year":"2011","journal-title":"IFAC Proc. 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