A new maximum-likelihood phase estimation method for X-ray pulsar signals  

作　　者：Hua ZHANG Lu-ping XU Yang-he SHEN Rong JIAO Jing-rong SUN 

机构地区：[1]School of Aerospace Science and Technology,Xidian University

出　　处：《Journal of Zhejiang University-Science C(Computers and Electronics)》2014年第6期458-469,共12页浙江大学学报C辑（计算机与电子（英文版）

基　　金：Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61172138);the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(Nos.K5051302015 and K5051302040);the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China(No.2013JQ8040);the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China(No.20130203120004)

摘　　要：X-ray pulsar navigation(XPNAV) is an attractive method for autonomous navigation of deep space in the future. Currently, techniques for estimating the phase of X-ray pulsar radiation involve the maximization of the general non-convex object functions based on the average profile from the epoch folding method. This results in the suppression of useful information and highly complex computation. In this paper, a new maximum likelihood(ML) phase estimation method that directly utilizes the measured time of arrivals(TOAs) is presented. The X-ray pulsar radiation will be treated as a cyclo-stationary process and the TOAs of the photons in a period will be redefined as a new process, whose probability distribution function is the normalized standard profile of the pulsar. We demonstrate that the new process is equivalent to the generally used Poisson model. Then, the phase estimation problem is recast as a cyclic shift parameter estimation under the ML estimation, and we also put forward a parallel ML estimation method to improve the ML solution. Numerical simulation results show that the estimator described here presents a higher precision and reduces the computational complexity compared with currently used estimators.X-ray pulsar navigation （XPNAV） is an attractive method for autonomous navigation of deep space in the future. Currently, techniques for estimating the phase of X-ray pulsar radiation involve the maximization of the general non-convex object functions based on the average profile fxom the epoch folding method. This results in the suppression of useful information and highly complex computation. In this paper, a new maximum likelihood （ML） phase estimation method that directly utilizes the measured time of arrivals （TOAs） is presented. The X-ray pulsar radiation will be treated as a cyclo-stationary process and the TOAs of the photons in a period will be redefined as a new process, whose probability distribution function is the normalized standard profile of the pulsar. We demonstrate that the new process is equivalent to the generally used Poisson model. Then, the phase estimation problem is recast as a cyclic shift parameter estimation under the ML estimation, and we also put forward a parallel ML estimation method to improve the ML solution. Numerical simulation results show that the estimator described here presents a higher precision and reduces the computational complexity compared with currently used estimators.

关 键 词：X-ray pulsar Poisson model Phase estimation Maximum likelihood 

分 类 号：TN96.1[电子电信—信号与信息处理]