The U. S. Air Force Academy GPS Flight Experiment Using The Navsys TIDGET™

Gabriele Belle, David B. Goldstein, Ron W. Humble, Dewey L. Parker, Catherine O’Brien

Abstract:	The United States Air Force Academy GPS flight experiment is intended to determine the capabilities for altitudes above the GPS constellation. The goal is to demonstrate the potential for new cost-effective tracking technologies using a GPS sensor for geosynchronous spacecraft. To demonstrate this concept the TIDGET sensor has been integrated into the Falconsat spacecraft. The patented using the signal broadcast by the GPS satellites while at TIDGET technology allows cost-effective tracking for all GPS applications [1,2,3,4]. For this mission the TIDGET is required to gather GPS raw data that will be transmitted to the satellite’s communication subsystem. The ground stations at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs (UCCS) and Boulder will receive telemetry data, describing the health of the satellite and GPS raw data. The GPS sensor uses a sparse sampling technique, which reduces the power consumption in comparison to a conventional receiver. The mission concept, the payload design, and the payload integration into the spacecraft are explained. Due to the highly elliptical orbit configuration, data acquisition is only possible when the spacecraft is on the far side of the Earth, near the apogee of the orbit. At this point the velocity is low and the Doppler shift of the signal will be a minimum. GPS data are acquired every five minutes and immediately transmitted to the ground station. Data reception will be random as the Falconsat has no attitude control system. The data will be recorded at the ground station. Post - processing of the data allows to determine the signal-to-noise ratio. The methods applied allow for the separation of the very weak GPS signal from the background noise and for determination of the spacecraft track above the constellation.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1997) September 16 - 19, 1997 Kansas City, MO
Pages:	717 - 721
Cite this article:	Belle, Gabriele, Goldstein, David B., Humble, Ron W., Parker, Dewey L., O’Brien, Catherine, "The U. S. Air Force Academy GPS Flight Experiment Using The Navsys TIDGET™," Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1997), Kansas City, MO, September 1997, pp. 717-721.
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