Time Delay of Arrival based Orbit Determination of Geosynchronous Signals of Opportunity

Earth science observations are crucial for our understanding of the Earth’s climate, water cycle, land, and atmosphere. Signals of Opportunity (SoOp) has recently emerged as an innovative method for producing these observations. SoOp reuses existing satellite communication signals for science measurements. A key factor in the accuracy of SoOp measurements, is the accuracy with which the transmitting satellite’s position can be determined. This thesis developed a distributed network of receivers, which performed time delay of arrival (TDOA) measurements, to solve for the position of a transmitting satellite, using their existing signals. These results were used to characterize the sensitivity of the calculated satellite position, to the TDOA measurement error.