The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is significantly advantageous to absolute and relative navigation for spacecraft formation flying. Ionospheric remote sensing, such as Total Electron Content (TEC) measurements or ionospheric irregularity studies are important potential Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications. A GNSS-based Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation testbed for LEO spacecraft formation flying has been developed and evaluated. The testbed infrastructure is composed of GNSS simulators, multi-constellation GNSS receiver(s), the Navigation & Control system and the Systems Tool Kit (STK) visualization system. A reference scenario of two LEO spacecraft is simulated with the initial in-track separation of 1000-m and targeted leader-follower configuration of 100-m along-track offset. Therefore, the feasibility and performance of the testbed have been demonstrated by benchmarking the simulation results with past work.
For ionospheric remote sensing, multi-constellation multi-frequency GNSS receivers are used to develop the GNSS TEC measurement and model evaluation system. GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou constellations are considered in this work. Multi-constellation GNSS TEC measurements and the GNSS-based HIL simulation testbed were integrated and applied to design a LEO satellite formation flying mission for ionospheric remote sensing. A scenario of observing sporadic E is illustrated and adopted to demonstrate how to apply GNSS-based spacecraft formation flying to study the ionospheric irregularities using the HIL simulation testbed. The entire infrastructure of GNSS-based spacecraft formation flying simulation and ionospheric remote sensing developed at Virginia Tech is capable of supporting future ionospheric remote sensing mission design and validation. / Master of Science / Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), are not only used to navigate vehicles such as automobiles and spacecraft, but they are also used as a tool to remotely study the Earth’s ionosphere. A GNSS-based hardware simulation testbed for a group of spacecraft flying in low altitude orbit with the capability to remotely sense the ionosphere has been developed and evaluated. The hardware testbed developed is composed of GNSS signal emulators, GNSS signal receiver(s), the spacecraft navigation & control system and a mission visualization system. A reference scenario of two spacecraft in low altitude orbit with an initial horizontal distance of 1000-m and a final separation of 100-m is successfully simulated. Therefore, the feasibility and performance of the hardware testbed have been demonstrated by comparing the simulation results with past work.
To study the Earth’s ionosphere, advanced GNSS receivers along with newly developed software are used to measure the ionospheric electron concentration. This software can be integrated with the hardware testbed and utilized to design spacecraft missions to study the ionosphere from the space. A scenario for observing a unique ionospheric structure is implemented to demonstrate application of the hardware testbed to more general ionospheric studies. Combining the software for ionospheric measurement and the hardware testbed for two spacecraft flying in formation can support future mission design and validation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/79594 |
| Date | 18 May 2017 |
| Creators | Peng, Yuxiang |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Scales, Wayne A., Sweeney, Dennis G., Black, Jonathan T. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | application/pdf, video/mpeg, video/mpeg |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0025 seconds