This paper investigates the performance of pulsar-based navigation in deep space mission applications. The noise properties of X-ray based and radio-baspulsar measurements are examined and compared. A closed form parametric covariance analysis tool was developed in this study. It provides a rough estimate of the navigation performance associated with a deep space cruise that makes use of ion thrusters and sequential pulsar observations. In addition, the flight trajectory of the Dawn spacecraft was used to form a hypothetical deep space mission scenario that utilizes pulsars as navigation beacons. This simulated scenario accounts for clock uncertainty, pulsar timing noise, maneuver execution errors, sequential observation and interruptions between pulsar observations. A particle filter was implemented to reduce the large initial position uncertainty by resolving the number of pulsar wavelengths between the spacecraft and the Solar System Barycenter. The resulting position and velocity uncertainties from the particle filter can be used to initialize an Extended Kalman Filter, which estimates the spacecraft position and velocity for steady state operations.

中文翻译：

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用于深空任务应用的脉冲星导航的各个方面

本文研究了基于脉冲星的导航在深空任务应用中的性能。对基于X射线和无线电基波测量的噪声特性进行了检查和比较。本研究开发了一种封闭形式的参数协方差分析工具。它提供了与深空巡航相关的导航性能的粗略估计，深空巡航利用离子推进器和顺序脉冲星观测。此外，黎明航天器的飞行轨迹被用于形成假设的深空任务场景，该场景利用脉冲星作为导航信标。该模拟方案考虑了时钟不确定性，脉冲星定时噪声，操纵执行错误，顺序观测以及脉冲星观测之间的干扰。通过解决宇宙飞船与太阳系重心之间的脉冲星波长数，实施了粒子滤波器以减少较大的初始位置不确定性。粒子滤波器产生的位置和速度不确定性可用于初始化扩展卡尔曼滤波器，该滤波器为稳态操作估算航天器的位置和速度。