Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction Images

The visibility of satellites is an important parameter for evaluating and predicting the accuracy and credibility of global navigation satellite system positioning. Since the satellite signal is easily blocked, reflected, and scattered by buildings, overpasses, and trees, the visible satellite numbe...

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Main Authors: Ruixiong Kou, Shuwen Yang, Zhuang Shi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10921713/
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author Ruixiong Kou
Shuwen Yang
Zhuang Shi
author_facet Ruixiong Kou
Shuwen Yang
Zhuang Shi
author_sort Ruixiong Kou
collection DOAJ
description The visibility of satellites is an important parameter for evaluating and predicting the accuracy and credibility of global navigation satellite system positioning. Since the satellite signal is easily blocked, reflected, and scattered by buildings, overpasses, and trees, the visible satellite number dramatically changes in time and space. The three-dimensional (3D) urban model, point clouds, and panoramic images are used to calculate the visibility of satellites. However, the refined urban model requires abundant manual work and is expensive, while point clouds with the characteristic of large data volume have the problem of computing efficiency low. Also, the public panoramic images only cover road areas, which can not calculate the visibility of satellites in 3D urban space. The existing methods are impossible to achieve refined, lightweight, and fast computation of the visible satellite number. Therefore, we propose the satellite visibility calculation method based on constructing virtual panoramic obstruction images through digital surface model (DSM). The required DSM range of sampling points is selected using an adaptive method considering the GNSS satellite elevation mask angle to reduce data volume. Then, the virtual panoramic obstruction imagery is constructed based on the determined range DSM, which saves time for the real-time calculation of satellite visibility. Hence, the calculation efficiency is greatly improved. To verify the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method, we collected the experiment field point clouds and constructed high-precision DSM for calculating satellite visibility of arbitrary locations. The experiments demonstrated that the proposed method provides an easy-to-use and high-precision solution to map the spatio-temporal visibility of satellites.
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issn 1939-1404
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publishDate 2025-01-01
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series IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
spelling doaj-art-7755b3bfbb444054906f41b097e064b52025-08-20T02:53:41ZengIEEEIEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing1939-14042151-15352025-01-01188312832410.1109/JSTARS.2025.355034110921713Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction ImagesRuixiong Kou0https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9455-9986Shuwen Yang1Zhuang Shi2Faculty of Geomatics, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou, ChinaFaculty of Geomatics, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou, ChinaFaculty of Geomatics, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou, ChinaThe visibility of satellites is an important parameter for evaluating and predicting the accuracy and credibility of global navigation satellite system positioning. Since the satellite signal is easily blocked, reflected, and scattered by buildings, overpasses, and trees, the visible satellite number dramatically changes in time and space. The three-dimensional (3D) urban model, point clouds, and panoramic images are used to calculate the visibility of satellites. However, the refined urban model requires abundant manual work and is expensive, while point clouds with the characteristic of large data volume have the problem of computing efficiency low. Also, the public panoramic images only cover road areas, which can not calculate the visibility of satellites in 3D urban space. The existing methods are impossible to achieve refined, lightweight, and fast computation of the visible satellite number. Therefore, we propose the satellite visibility calculation method based on constructing virtual panoramic obstruction images through digital surface model (DSM). The required DSM range of sampling points is selected using an adaptive method considering the GNSS satellite elevation mask angle to reduce data volume. Then, the virtual panoramic obstruction imagery is constructed based on the determined range DSM, which saves time for the real-time calculation of satellite visibility. Hence, the calculation efficiency is greatly improved. To verify the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method, we collected the experiment field point clouds and constructed high-precision DSM for calculating satellite visibility of arbitrary locations. The experiments demonstrated that the proposed method provides an easy-to-use and high-precision solution to map the spatio-temporal visibility of satellites.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10921713/Digital surface model (DSM)global navigation satellite system (GNSS)point cloudssatellite visibility mapsvirtual panoramic obstruction images
spellingShingle Ruixiong Kou
Shuwen Yang
Zhuang Shi
Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction Images
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
Digital surface model (DSM)
global navigation satellite system (GNSS)
point clouds
satellite visibility maps
virtual panoramic obstruction images
title Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction Images
title_full Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction Images
title_fullStr Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction Images
title_full_unstemmed Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction Images
title_short Visibility Analysis of 3D Urban Space Navigation Satellites Based on Virtual Panoramic Obstruction Images
title_sort visibility analysis of 3d urban space navigation satellites based on virtual panoramic obstruction images
topic Digital surface model (DSM)
global navigation satellite system (GNSS)
point clouds
satellite visibility maps
virtual panoramic obstruction images
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10921713/
work_keys_str_mv AT ruixiongkou visibilityanalysisof3durbanspacenavigationsatellitesbasedonvirtualpanoramicobstructionimages
AT shuwenyang visibilityanalysisof3durbanspacenavigationsatellitesbasedonvirtualpanoramicobstructionimages
AT zhuangshi visibilityanalysisof3durbanspacenavigationsatellitesbasedonvirtualpanoramicobstructionimages