A Study of Pulsar Signal Modeling and its Time Delay Estimation for Relative Navigation

Amir A. Emadzadeh, and Jason L. Speyer

Abstract:	In this paper we address two tasks. First, a mathematical model of Pulsar signal and the measurement noise at the Pulsar detector is proposed. This model is then used in simulations. The idea of using Pulsar signals for relative navigation is based on detecting a certain Pulsar signal at each spacecraft and estimating the time delay between the measured signals. This Time Delay Estimation (TDE) can then be used to estimate the relative position between the spacecrafts. Since more accurate TDE will re- sult in more accurate relative position estimation, in the second task, we focus on formulating TDE problem and introducing different approaches for TDE between two signals. These techniques are implemented using time-domain and frequency-domain data. Basic Cross-Correlation (BCC) and General- ized Cross-Correlation (GCC) methods are studied and their performance is compared through analysis and computer simulations. It is shown that filtering the signals prior to determining the cross-correlation process has certain advantages.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 28 - 30, 2008 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	119 - 126
Cite this article:	Emadzadeh, Amir A., Speyer, Jason L., "A Study of Pulsar Signal Modeling and its Time Delay Estimation for Relative Navigation," Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2008, pp. 119-126.
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