Performance analysis and validation of precision multisatellite RF measurement scheme for microsatellite formations

Abstract

Almost all existing studies on inter-satellite radio-frequency (RF) measurement have focused on two-satellite formations. Although some frequency division multiple access and code division multiple access multisatellite RF measurement schemes have been proposed, their poor scalability does not satisfy the inter-satellite measurement requirements of multisatellite formations, especially large-scale formations. Two-way ranging (TWR), which is based on a time division mechanism, is an effective solution that has been used for inter-satellite links in the global positioning system and Beidou navigation constellations. However, the high measurement accuracy achieved with TWR in these navigation constellations is heavily reliant on high-performance atomic clocks and the assistance of navigation ephemeris, which are not available on microsatellite platforms. This work focuses on a scalable multisatellite measurement scheme that adopts a distributed broadcast-based time division multiple access mechanism as the media access control layer and uses an asymmetric double-side TWR method as the physical layer. The measurement performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated through in-depth theoretical modeling, simulation verification, and experimental validation, along with a comprehensive comparison with the conventional TWR method. The experimental results show that centimeter-level measurement accuracy can be achieved with the proposed scheme when only a common miniaturized frequency source is used. This accuracy level is two orders of magnitude better than that of the TWR method, and thus satisfies the application requirements of general large-scale microsatellite formations.