Orbit estimation of the interferometric cartwheel using an extended linearized Kalman filter

We derive models and relations which might be useful for the calibration and orbit determination of cartwheel configurations such as proposed by Massonnet (2001). The aim is to develop a method to obtain precise position and velocity estimates for each individual cartwheel satellite from noisy and erroneous measurements (e.g. GPS). For later interferometric SAR processing precise estimates of the baseline vectors between the satellites are essential, because every error in the position of the antenna leads to a multiple error in height of the digital elevation model. The whole approach is based on state space arguments giving rise to Kalman filtering methods.