The Research of X-Ray Pulsar Signals Simulation Method

Abstract

X-ray can’t be directly observed at laboratory due to the absorption of atmosphere. Furthermore, observation at space consumes a great deal of financial and material resources and is highly risky. Therefore, simulation data of X-ray pulsar is of great importance, whereas the current simulation method can only generate X-ray signals of constant period at the Solar System Barycenter (SSB), without considering the slow varying property of pulsar period and the large scale space-time effects. This paper proposes a new simulation method for X-ray pulsar signal. First, the arrival phase of the next photon at the SSB is recursively calculated according to the phase of the previous photon. Next, seek the pulsar ephemeris to obtain the phase evolution model of the current time. Then, transform the arrival phase of the photon to its arrival time at the SSB using the obtained phase evolution model. Subsequently, utilizing the solar system ephemeris and orbital parameters of the spacecraft, the arrival time of the corresponding photon at the spacecraft can be acquired by an iterative algorithm. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed methods. The simulation data of the proposed method includes the slow varying property of pulsar period and the large scale space-time effects, also is very similar to the RXTE observation data. Thus the proposed method can be applied to the validation of all the algorithms needed in the practical navigation, such as profile integrating and large scale time transformation.