Autonomous Rubidium Clock Weak Frequency Jump Detector for Onboard Navigation Satellite System

Abstract

Frequency jumps are common in rubidium frequency sources. They affect the estimation of user position in navigational satellite systems. These jumps must be detected and corrected immediately as they have direct impact on the navigation system integrity. A novel weak frequency jump detector is proposed based on a Kalman filter with a multi-interval approach. This detector can be applied for both "sudden" and "slow" frequency transitions. In this detection method, noises of clock data are reduced by Kalman filtering, for accurate estimation of jump size with less latency. Analysis on in-orbit rubidium atomic frequency standard (RAFS) phase telemetry data shows that the detector can be used for fast detection and correction of weak frequency jumps. Furthermore, performance comparison of different existing frequency jump detection techniques with the proposed detector is discussed. A multialgorithm-based strategy is proposed depending on the jump size and latency for onboard navigation satellites having RAFS as the primary frequency source.