Journal of Xidian University

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Influence of the pulsar direction error and geometry distribution on spacecraft relative navigation

XUE Mengfan;LI Xiaoping;FANG Haiyan;SUN Haifeng;SHEN Lirong   

  1. (School of Aerospace Science & Technology, Xidian Univ., Xi'an 710071, China)
  • Received:2015-11-16 Online:2017-02-20 Published:2017-04-01
  • Contact: FANG Haiyan E-mail:hyfang@xidian.edu.cn

Abstract:

X-ray pulsar navigation is one of the effective means to realize the spacecraft relative navigation. Based on the Kalman filtering measurement model of X-ray pulsar based relative navigation, the effect of pulsar direction error and geometry distribution on navigation accuracy is researched. To model the pulsar direction error, a method of translating the model error into the measurement error is proposed. Simulation results indicate that the relative distance deviation caused by pulsars  direction errors of 1arcsec is up to 0.34% and that it increases linearly with the actuating direction error when the direction error is within 1000arcsec. The effect of the pulsar geometry distribution on navigation precision is remarkable. Selecting 4 pulsars from 8 for navigation, the discrepancy of navigation precision reaches 10.74%.

Key words: relative navigation, X-ray pulsar, navigation precision, direction error