Patent ID: 7946533

Claim:
A method for determining orbits for a plurality of satellites in a constellation for providing a satellite service using the plurality of satellites in the constellation, comprising: determining an orbit for each one of the plurality of satellites in the constellation, the determining of the orbit comprising: determining one or more orbit parameters of the orbit for each one of the plurality of satellites, by minimizing a cost function selected from the group of J = ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ w i ( 90 ⁢ ° - min [ θ i ( t , e , i , L , ω ] ) 2 ] 1 / 2 , ⁢ J = [ 1 N ⁢ ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ ( P _ i none ) 2 ] 1 / 2 ⁢ ⁢ and ⁢ ⁢ J = [ 1 N ⁢ ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ ( 1 - P _ i all ) 2 ] 1 / 2 , wherein 90°−min[θ i (t,e,i,L,ω)] represents a maximum co-elevation angle for an ith city over a single sidereal day, t is a number between 0 and T orbit , T orbit represents an orbit period, e represents an orbit eccentricity, i represents an orbit inclination, L represents a longitude of an ascending node, ω represents an argument of perigee, N represents a number of cities, and w i represents normalized city weighting factors, wherein P i none represents an average value of probability based on an insufficient signal, and P i all represents an average value of probability based on a sufficient signal.