Relativistic positioning in Schwarzschild space-time

Spanish Relativity Meeting: almost 100 years after Einstein's revolution

Puchades, Neus^1 ; Sáez, Diego^1

Departamento de Astronomía y Astrofisíca, Universidad de Valencia, Burjassot, Valencia

46100, Spain^1

关键词: Dimensionless parameters;    Global Navigation Satellite Systems;    Inertial coordinate;    Minkowski geometries;    Minkowski space-time;    Positioning error;    Schwarzschild;    Schwarzschild geometry;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/600/1/012054/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/600/1/012054

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

In the Schwarzschild space-time created by an idealized static spherically symmetric Earth, two approaches -based on relativistic positioning- may be used to estimate the user position from the proper times broadcast by four satellites. In the first approach, satellites move in the Schwarzschild space-time and the photons emitted by the satellites follow null geodesics of the Minkowski space-time asymptotic to the Schwarzschild geometry. This assumption leads to positioning errors since the photon world lines are not geodesics of any Minkowski geometry. In the second approach -the most coherent one- satellites and photons move in the Schwarzschild space-time. This approach is a first order one in the dimensionless parameter GM/R (with the speed of light c=1). The two approaches give different inertial coordinates for a given user. The differences are estimated and appropriately represented for users located inside a great region surrounding Earth. The resulting values (errors) are small enough to justify the use of the first approach, which is the simplest and the most manageable one. The satellite evolution mimics that of the GALILEO global navigation satellite system.