Carrier-Doppler-based real-time two way satellite frequency transfer and its application in BeiDou system

Abstract

Two-way satellite time and frequency transfer (TWSTFT) method is valuable for precise time and frequency transfer. The frequency could be directly transferred by utilizing two-way carrier Doppler measurement. This method requires each station observing both its own and associated station’s transponder signals transferred by satellite. In BeiDou system (BDS), the reference station and the field station construct a two-way link via a GEO satellite, and the field station sends pseudorange and carrier phase information to the reference station by transmission signal, in order to achieve real time TWSTFT. This paper analyzes the theory of carrier Doppler based TWSTFT (called CD-TWSTFT), and validates it by using on line data of BDS. The results demonstrated that the performance of CD TWSTFT is much better than code based TWSTFT in short-term frequency transfer and almost same at long-term frequency transfer.