English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

This article presents a feasibility analysis to remotely estimate the geo-location of a femto-satellite only using two station-CubeSats and the communication link between the femto-satellite and each CubeSat. The presented approach combines the Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) and Angle Of Arrival (AOA) methods. We present the motivation, the envisioned solution together with the constraints for reaching it, and the best potential sensitivity of the location precision for different (1) deployment scenarios of the femto-satellite, (2) precisions in the location of the CubeSats, and (3) precisions in each CubeSat’s Attitude Determination and Control Systems (ADCS). We implemented a simulation tool to evaluate the average performance for different random scenarios in space. For the evaluated cases, we found that the Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) for Gaussian noise over the small error region of the solution is highly dependent on the deployment direction, with differences in the location precision close to three orders of magnitude between the best and worst deployment directions. For the best deployment case, we also studied the best location estimation that might be achieved with the current Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and ADCS commercially available for CubeSats. We found that the mean-square error (MSE) matrix of the proposed solution under the small error condition can attain the CRB for the simulated time, achieving a precision below 30 m when the femto-satellite is separated by around 800 m from the mother-CubeSat.

A Femto-Satellite Localization Method Based on TDOA and AOA Using Two CubeSats