Integrated method for measuring distance and time difference between small satellites

The advancement of small satellites is promoting the development of distributed satellite systems,and for the latter,it is essential to coordinate the spatial and temporal relations between mutually visible satellites.By now,dual one-way ranging(DOWR)and two-way time transfer(TWTT)are generally integrated in the same software and hardware system to meet the limitations of small satellites in terms of size,weight and power(SWaP)consumption.However,studies show that pseudo-noise regenerative ranging(PNRR)performs better than DOWR if some advanced implementation technologies are employed.Besides,PNRR has no requirement on time synchronization.To apply PNRR to small satellites,and meanwhile,meet the demand for time difference measurement,we propose the round-way time difference measurement,which can be combined with PNRR to form a new integrated system without exceeding the limits of SWaP.The new integrated system can provide distributed small satellite systems with on-orbit high-accuracy and high-precision distance measurement and time difference measurement in real time.Experimental results show that the precision of ranging is about 1.94 cm,and that of time difference measurement is about 78.4 ps,at the signal to noise ratio of 80 dBHz.

Approach to inter-satellite time synchronization for micro-satellite cluster

Micro-satellite cluster enables a whole new class of missions for communications, remote sensing, and scientific research for both civilian and military purposes. Synchronizing the time of the satellites in a cluster is important for both cluster sensing capabilities and its autonomous operating. However, the existing time synchronization methods are not suitable for microsatellite cluster, because it requires too many human interventions and occupies too much ground control resource. Although, data post-process may realize the equivalent time synchronization, it requires processing time and powerful computing ability on the ground, which cannot be implemented by cluster itself. In order to autonomously establish and maintain the time benchmark in a cluster, we propose a compact time difference compensation system（TDCS）, which is a kind of time control loop that dynamically adjusts the satellite reference frequency according to the time difference. Consequently, the time synchronization in the cluster can be autonomously achieved on-orbit by synchronizing the clock of other satellites to a chosen one＇s. The experimental result shows that the standard deviation of time synchronization is about 102 ps when the carrier to noise ratio（CNR） is 95 d BHz, and the standard deviation of corresponding frequency difference is approximately0.36 Hz.