Space Navigation with Digital Beam Steering GPS Receiver Technology

K. Gold, R. Silva, R. Worrell, A. Brown

Abstract:	Space-based GPS technology presents several significant challenges over Earth based systems. These include visibility issues for rotating platforms, and tracking of GPS satellites from spacecraft that are in higher orbits than the GPS. Kinematic relative position in orbit also presents challenges in resolving carrier phase ambiguities in real time. NAVSYS has developed a digital GPS receiver that makes use of 3-dimensional Digital Beam Steering technology. This offers several advantages including: •All around visibility to maintain tracking for spinning satellites •Gain and nulls from beam steering to allow tracking of weak signals (GPS sidelobes) from high orbits •Reduction of multipath to allow better kinematic resolution •Reprogrammable software architecture, allowing different mission phases to use the same receiver
Published in:	Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation and CIGTF 22nd Guidance Test Symposium (2003) June 23 - 25, 2003 Hyatt Regency Hotel Albuquerque, NM
Pages:	420 - 426
Cite this article:	Gold, K., Silva, R., Worrell, R., Brown, A., "Space Navigation with Digital Beam Steering GPS Receiver Technology," Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation and CIGTF 22nd Guidance Test Symposium (2003), Albuquerque, NM, June 2003, pp. 420-426.
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