A modiΡed pseudo-noise（PN） code regeneration method is proposed to improve the clock tracking accuracy without impairing the code acquisition time performance.Thus,the method can meet the requirement of high accuracy ranging measurements in short time periods demanded by radio-science missions.The tracking error variance is derived by linear analysis.For some existing PN codes,which can be acquired rapidly,the tracking error variance performance of the proposed method is about 2.6 dB better than that of the JPL scheme（originally proposed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory）,and about 1.5 dB better than that of the traditional double loop scheme.
Xiaojun Jin Zhonghe Jin Chaojie Zhang Jianwen Jiang Yangming Zheng
This article presents a near-Earth satellite orbit estimation method for pico-satellite applications with light-weight and low-power requirements. The method provides orbit information autonomously from magnetometer and sun sensor, with an extended Kalman filter （EKF）. Real-time position/velocity parameters are estimated with attitude independently from two quantities： the measured magnitude of the Earth’s magnetic field, and the measured dot product of the magnetic field vector and the sun vector. To guarantee the filter’s effectiveness, it is recommended that the sun sensor should at least have the same level of accuracy as magnetometer. Furthermore, to reduce filter’s computation expense, simplification methods in EKF’s Jacobian calculations are introduced and testified, and a polynomial model for fast magnetic field calculation is developed. With these methods, 50% of the computation expense in dynamic model propagation and 80% of the computation burden in measurement model calculation can be reduced. Tested with simulation data and compared with original magnetometer-only methods, filter achieves faster convergence and higher accuracy by 75% and 30% respectively, and the suggested simplification methods are proved to be harmless to filter’s estimation performance.
The ranging accuracy of a pseudo-noise ranging system is mainly decided by range jitter and time delay discrimination. Many factors can affect the ranging accuracy, one of which is the chip rate. In digital signal processing, the time delay discrimination and autocorrelation function of sampled ranging sequences of different chip rates are very different. An approximation simulation model is established according to an in-phase quadrature (I/Q) correlator which is used to evaluate the time delay. Simulation results of the range jitter and time delay discrimination show that the chip rate which provides a non-integer sample-to-chip rate ratio can achieve a higher ranging accuracy, and some test results validate the simulation model. In some design missions, the simulation results may help to select an optimum sample-to-chip rate ratio to satisfy the design requirement on the ranging accuracy.
Jian-wen JIANG Wei-jun YANG Chao-jie ZHANG Xiao-jun JIN Zhong-he JIN
