Pulsar Signal Adaptive Surrogate Modeling

• https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/11/10/839

Autonomous Navigation, Gaussian Process Regression, Interstellar Navigation, PRESTO, Pulsar Navigation, Pulsar Observation, Pulsar Timing, Pulsar Timing Model, Radio Waves, Surrogate Modeling, Synthetic Signal Generator, X-Ray Waves

With an increasing number of spacecraft targeting beyond the Earth's orbit in recent years, autonomous navigation solutions have gained importance. The availability of pulsar signals for simulations and HW testing is crucial to developing pulsar-based navigation. While X-ray is preferred for pulsar navigation sensors, the options for measuring pulsar signals in X-ray is limited by existing space observatories. This work proposes a method to build a surrogate pulsar signal model based on radio pulsar observations. Pulsar selection usable for the actual radio telescope used is discussed, and a set of observations is realized. Measured data are processed with PRESTO, and pulsar parameters for the model are derived. The proposed model expects all pulsar signal parameters to change in time. The resulting model can be the basis for all known synthetic pulsar signal generators, allowing for a more realistic resulting signal.