Integrated design of ranging and DOR signal for China's deep space navigation

Abstract

An integrated ranging and differential one-way range (DOR) signal design is implemented. The design utilizes the regenerative pseudo-noise ranging scheme and one pair of dedicated DOR tones for the deep space United X Band system. To demonstrate its effectiveness, it was applied to China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter and compared with the classic and normal designs. Using the link budget and error analysis methods, the measurement accuracy and communication ability were assessed. Results show that the novel design achieves better performance compared with that of the classic and normal designs. In the applied case, the power efficiency improved by >30%\gt 30 \% , two-way ranging precision improved from 0.50 to 0.09 m, and the two-way Doppler precision improved by 20% compared with those of the classic one. In addition, the spacecraft thermal noise during Delta-DOR measurements was slightly reduced. Owing to the higher downlink residual carrier, the supported telemetry data rate increased by 50%. Compared with the normal one, a higher downlink residual carrier (by 0.35 dB) was achieved by the novel design and resulted in slightly better ranging and Doppler accuracies. The novel design has a good technical foundation and is expected to be adopted in China’s future lunar and deep space explorations.

Keywords

• pseudo-noise ranging
• very long baseline interferometry
• signal design
• deep space exploration
• link budget