Augmentation Method for X-Ray Pulsar Navigation Using Time Difference of Arrival and Range Measurement, Based on Polarization Encoded Pulse Position Modulation

This paper addresses the use of the position difference between the reference satellite and the target spacecraft to improve X-ray pulsar navigation (XPNAV) for Earth orbit spacecraft. This is achieved by first installing an X-ray detector on the reference satellite whose position is accurately known. The position measurement error of the reference satellite, known as the correction value, is sent to the spacecraft through the X-ray communication (XCOM) link. It is hoped that the accuracy of the spacecraft state measurement can be improved by offsetting common errors of measurement. X-ray ranging observation between the reference satellite and the target spacecraft, obtained from XCOM, can accomplish high precision in distance measurements, which can supply precise information for XPNAV. A novel pulse position modulation (PPM) polarization encode and modulation mode is used to achieve difference time transmission and range measurement simultaneously. Through the information fusion of the difference timing observation and the ranging observation, the positioning accuracy of the spacecraft is improved further. With the aim of estimating the spacecraft’s errors in location and speed, an adaptive divided difference filter (ADDF) is applied to eliminate nonlinearity. Several simulation cases are designed to verify the proposed method. Numerical simulations show that, compared with the traditional timing observation, the difference timing and ranging method can improve the position estimation accuracy by 27% and the velocity estimation accuracy by 22%.