Overview of Pulsar Navigation: Past, Present and Future Trends

Abstract

In this contribution we will provide an overview of the work that has been done on pulsar navigation and show a new direction in pulsar‐based navigation research. Up until now the focus has been on X‐ray pulsars, whereas our focus will be on the possibility of using radio pulsars. The radio frequency range has been neglected because the radio‐frequency pulses were assumed to be too weak to detect with antennas of a reasonable size. We will demonstrate that with a relatively small antenna radio pulses can be detected even on Earth. In our discussion we will make a comparison of pulsar navigation with GNSS and the differences are analyzed in a detailed discussion on both navigation methods.

A-priory Error of the Initial Conditions While Solving the Problem of the Space Vehicle Navigation Using Pulsar Signals

“…The last component keeps the temporal change of the electro-magnetic illumination at the presence of the Sun gravitation field (Shapiro effect). It was shown in [10] The math model of the observed i-th AS signal is described by (3) if ∆t (i) is written with r sv = r(t) + r E (t) seen in Fig. 1.…”

“…There are in space the needed beacons, this astronomic sources (AS) of electromagnetic illumination with sufficient stability level. They are far away star groups or galaxies called quasars and also some star systems or separate stars-pulsars [6][7][8][9][10]. One of the first publications [9] where errors of SV position estimation using pulsars was discussed belong to the 80-th of the last century.…”

“…One of the first publications [9] where errors of SV position estimation using pulsars was discussed belong to the 80-th of the last century. During the following years the interest to the problem grew [10].…”

“…The most stable are the signals of AS with periods of illumination from parts to tens of milliseconds. Stability of these signals is compared to the stability of nuclear frequency standard [6,10]. The problem of a SV autonomic navigation system (ANS) has many aspects.…”

Detection and estimation of pulsar signals for navigation

“…This new technology can be an alternative to standard navigation based on radio tracking by GPS ground stations, without the disadvantages of uncertainty increasing with distance from Earth and the dependence on the ground control. The key constraints towards designing the pulsar-based navigation system are the very poor input SNR of pulsar signals, corrupted by impulsive interference, broadband interference and sometimes periodic terrestrial radiation, and the time-consuming processing of pulsar signals [2,5,6]. The standard algorithm for processing of pulsar signals implemented in most of radio observatories usually includes epoch-folding (signal integration during a lot of pulse repetition periods) and intensity imaging [2].…”