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Celestial navigation

Research Proposal · March 2017

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32751.33444

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Celestial Navigation
using Millisecond
Pulsars

Sinnappoo Arunan.
March 2017
Abstract
Deep space voyage will requires an accurate and reproducible celestial navigation system.
Millisecond pulsar is a natural atomic clock and wildly available in our close vicinity. With at least
four of them in 3- Dimensional space using hybrid active Complementary Metal oxide
semiconductor focal plane array in dipole phased array + gimbaled antenna can determine ‘time’
in 0.5 picosecond accuracy.

Introduction
Space is a vast arena. Neighboring star lies just 4.2 light years. That is our current powerful rocket
will reach it in 40 to 50 years! By the way to our cousin planet Mars, will take about six months.
So in this space getting lose is easier than losing in Amazon forest. In this arena navigation
becoming important as for small deviation in the path can end up in totally unexpected place.

As like Global Positioning Satellites[2], we need navigator guidance outside the solar system to
travel far from low Earth orbit. This has to be precious as GPS also. There are only two man-made
objects outside the solar system. They are Vikings. So it is natural that we have to look for natural
objects as navigator points.
In this paper I am selecting millisecond pulsars as celestial guidance for navigation. With current
detector technology which has to be more suitable for long duration operation in radiation
environment, I am going to calculate the time, position and distance of my spacecraft in just close
reach of solar system.

In following chapters I will discuss on what is celestial navigation, what makes pulsar as natural
GPS, characters of pulsars, needed instrumental technologies to receive pulsar signal, analyzing it
and make use of it as navigator. And also pros and cons of this navigation system and obstacles to
make it success.

Celestial Navigation
This is an ancient science of position fixing that enables a traveler to travel through sea without
having relay on estimated calculations or dead reckoning[14]. Celestial navigation uses things that
can be seen or angular measurements taken between a celestial body and visible horizon. A
navigation system based on celestial markers will be independent of GPS and available in any
Earth orbit as well as in interplanetary and interstellar travel.

Millisecond pulsar

Pulsar is the remnants of massive star that have become neutron star, where its mass exceeding the
Sun is packed into an area of 20 – 30 sq km. Millisecond pulsars are recycled pulsars of our age
old Universe. Even though their individual pulse time can vary, series of pulse average is in close
vicinity to our Atomic clock. B1937+21(J1939+2134) which is the more stable pulsar has pulse
period of 1.555780646881979 ms[1]. That is 10-14 to 10-15 stable. Its spin down rate is 1.05 ×10-
19
s/s. They emit their pulses in manner of light house in broad spectrum frequencies. By using X
–ray frequencies of them we can reduce the time delay due to dispersion measure and size of
receiver also.

Antenna

For receiving X-rays we will need small antennas when compare to radio receiver. Due to
unreliable signal direction as due to spacecraft movement in 3-Dimensional space, need of
continuous pointing to at least four navigational pulsars, small collecting area for X –ray range
and to be acceptable weight of the system we will use conical dipole (see chart No: 01) phased
array + gimbaled antenna. Using parabolic antenna does not seem to be practical for navigation as
spacecraft will not go in straight line and it may rotate itself. It is reasonable to use dipole phased
array for this. But in the time of urgency having a gimbaled antenna also will be helpful.

According to Lorimer & Kramer, 2005 geometrical antenna area is,

S 2k (TREC + TSKY) ½
W
Aant = (1)
N ꜪΔS √np tintΔv P-W

Here,

S/N  Signal noise ratio

k  Boltzmann’s constant
Trec  receiver noise temperature
Tsky  sky temperature
Tint  minimum integration time
Ꜫ  Antenna efficiency
ΔS  average flux density
Δv  frequency bandwidth
np  polarization
W  pulse width
P  period of pulsar
In this situation that we will assume np as two, that is both polarizations are averaged. Expected
signal to noise ratio (SNR) of at least 10 for better measurement [2].
For pulsar B1937+21, pulse period is roughly 1.56ms and pulse width is 0.038ms. Receiver noise
temperature assumed to be 100 K, sky temperature is 5 K, observation frequency bandwidth is 400
MHz, average flux density at 400 MHz is 240mJy, Ꜫ = 0.9, minimum integration time has to be at
least 3600s and Boltzmann’s constant is 1.38064852 × 10-23 m2 kg s-2 K-1.
For this, calculated geometrical antenna size will be at least 1225.62 m2. That is very large. This
shows that, it will be economical only for large spacecraft build.

Dipole Advantages Dipole Disadvantages

Ability to jump from one target to another in few Coverage is limited to 120° in azimuth and
seconds elevation
Very complex structure with processors, phase
Arbitrary mode of surveillance and tracking
shifters etc.

Free eligible integration time High cost

Faulty in single component will decrease

Low frequency agility.
capability and beam sharpness but still operational

High gain width and loss side lobes

Both communication and analyzing several

pulsars at same time can be done.
Chart No: 01
Detector
In our spacecraft, we are going to detect X –ray range frequency of electromagnetic waves.
Because as they have high frequency their dispersion due to interstellar electrons is less. So time
delay of receiving signals due to dispersion measure is less than radio waves. And radio wave
detection will need gigantic antenna compare to X ray detection.
Nowadays there lot of kinds of detectors. Charged coupled device, complementary metal oxide
semiconductors etc. But I have selected Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)
over Charged coupled device (CCD) due to following reasons. (See chart no: 02)
 Less radiation damage
 Moving objects can be captured clearly
 Less power consumption
 Extremely cost effective

Complementary Metal Oxide Charged Coupled Device

Semiconductors (CMOS) (CCD)

Each device contains at least one transistor Overlapping gate structures serve to shift
as an access device so if cell damaged others the charge to the edge of the array where it
can compensate. is readout.

Moderate quality sensor. But reason

High quality sensors
advancement brought lots of improvement.

Less power consumption High power consumption

High dark current Low dark current

Typically higher noise High signal to noise

Moderate energy resolution Fano-limited energy resolution

Distortion in image Has bloom effect.

Chart No: 02
In specifically, Hybrid CMOS back-illuminated active focal plane will be used [3] [4] [5] in
dipole phased array and gimbaled system.
Flow line of detector will be,
Collection of optical elements  Readout circuitry  photo-detector.

Pulsar Timing
Pulsar timing is a study neutron star’s each pulses over a long period of time. The regular
monitoring of the rotation of the neutron star by tracking the time of arrival (TOA) of each and
every pulses. This is an unambiguous account of each pulsar may be of decades long. This is
calculated by phase coherent pulsar timing. That is rotational phase of the pulsar at any time tb
(time at solar system barycenter that is barycenter dynamic time[TDB]) is,
Փ(tb) = Փ(t0b) + f(tb – t0b) + ½f ́ (t –t0b)2 + f ́ ́ ́/6(t – t0b)3…… (2)
This is a Taylor expansion.
t0b  reference time at solar system barycenter(SSB)
f  d Փ/dt – rotational frequency
f ́  first time derivation of frequency
f ́ ́ ́, f ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ ́ these values are too small for millisecond pulsar
Փ  phase of arriving pulses
This phase model equation provides a method to predict the expected arrival time of the peak
amplitude of a pulsar signal at the solar system barycenter origin. [6]
But this phase analysis depends on several factors as this monitoring has to be done at Earth
topocentric coordinates. Some of them are follows.
 Rotation of Earth introduces a variable time delay of up to transit time over one Earth
radius. (Roemer delay)
 The Earth’s orbit is elliptical, not circular (Roemer delay - ΔRʘ)
 The Sun moves relative to solar system inertial center, Solar System Barycenter (SSB),
which moves essentially uniformly through space. SSB lies just outside the surface of Sun.
(Δclock)
 The gravitational potential of Earth differs with distance from Sun. It further differs due to
ellipticity of Earth orbit. According to General relativity predicts a small annual variation
of an Earth bound clock rate as compared with reference clock in circular orbit. (Einstein
delay - ΔEʘ)
 Doppler Effect varies as Earth of velocity varies through the year. So receiver frequency
also varies with time.
  Due to gravitational potential well of Sun its planets and other objects in solar system,
causes a variable delay in pulse pathway as it received at Earth from a distant pulsar.
(Shapiro delay - ΔSʘ)
 Radiometer noises from observing system, our atmosphere, cosmic microwave background
and Galactic synchrotron emission.
 Pulse jitter due to property of pulsar itself.
 As inter stellar medium is turbulent, and both the Earth and the pulsar in motion with
respect to the ISM, over time that the pulsar has to traverse different dispersion measures.
(ΔDM)
 Pulsar period lengthens as the rotation rate of pulsar slows down during the observation.
This is time dependent measure and usually range about 10-16 to 10-19 second/second for
millisecond pulsars.
 Recently confirmed [7] gravitational waves also will have effect on time of arrival due to
non-Euclidean space. But magnitude of effect is still not available (Δ GW). That correction
also had to be included.

tb = ttopo - t0;topo + Δclock - ΔDM + ΔRʘ +ΔEʘ + ΔSʘ + Δ GW (3)

ttopo - t0;topo  TOA at the topocentric coordinate that is at Earth’s

surface and measured by clock in it with reference epoch(t0).

Δclock = (ń∙r)/c (4)

ń  unit direction to the pulsar
r  Earth position relative to SSB

ΔEʘ = [1 + U/c2 + ½(v/c) 2] d ttopo (5)

U  total gravitational potential acting on the spacecraft clock
v  total speed of the Earth in local frame through solar system.
c  speed of light.

Precision of Time of Arrival measure.

According to Suneel I. Sheikh, Darryll J Pines [6] in page 53 of “Spacecraft Navigation Using X
ray pulsar” and David Nice [8] in his “Introduction on pulsar timing” mentioned that precision of
TOA depends on source flux density on observation bandwidth, duty cycle of pulsar, observation
time and many others.
 Tsys η ηP
σTOA = (6)
G S √ηBnp

η  Duty cycle
Tsys  system temperature
T  observation time
G  antenna gain
S  pulsar flux density
np  polarization
B  Bandwidth
P  period of pulsar

Using these range measurements of time of arrival with navigation Kalman filter [9] will give us
more precious level of position and timing. (One sigma level).

Pulsar based navigation of spacecraft

A) Altitude measurement
A static or fixed detector on spacecraft can detect a pulsar’s pulse on its field of view. Which can
be compared with pulsar timing database to acquire the source identity. With known pulsars pulse
angles with sensor coordinate, we can estimate the altitude of spacecraft. Never the less accuracy
of altitude measurement vastly depends on following [6]:
1) Detector’s effective area
2) Detector position resolution
3) Acceptable integration time
4) Detector mask scale and distance.
In our spacecraft with dipole phased array + gimbaled antenna system we could observe all
directions in one time. Specifically gimbaled antenna will follow high resolution pulsar to maintain
accuracy of time and altitude.
B) Measurement of spacecraft velocity
Spacecraft velocity can be determined by Doppler Effect. Measuring the particular direction pulsar
frequency and compare it with our pulsar timing database will give us Doppler shift in that
particular direction. With Doppler shift formula we can calculate the velocity of the spacecraft in
that particular direction.

Vwave + VObserver
fobserved = fsource (7)
Vwave

Vwave+ VObserver
fobserved = fsource (8)
Vwave

In above Doppler formulas, we are assuming that pulsars are stable in reference frame. By
measuring Doppler shift in multi directions, we can determine spacecraft’s speed.
C) Time clock
Millisecond pulsars are precious timers. Their accuracy can be compared with our Earth bound
atomic clocks [10]. This stability of pulsars can be used to adjust the drift in spacecraft’s clock
regularly. For this phase- locked loop method [11] can be implemented. As we already calculating
the phase different in the pulse cycles, phase-locked loop method correction can be easily
implemented.
With the use of gimbaled antenna continuous observation of a millisecond pulsar is feasible. This
continuous observation data can be feed through onboard computer to differentiate phase different
and update the onboard clock. To avoid an unavoidable circumstances such as timing pulsar not
in field of view can be corrected by Kalman filter.

D) Spacecraft position.
Spacecraft navigation is the utter most important step in deep space travel. With our dipole phased
array we could observe several pulsars at on time. So specific time we could simultaneously
calculate three directional position of spacecraft. But as earlier mentioned for Earth topocentric
measurement of Time of Arrival will depends on several factor for our spacecraft measurements.
Փ(tb) = Փ(t0b) + f(tb – t0b) + ½f ́ (t –t0b)2 + f ́ ́ ́/6(t – t0b)3

tb = ts:topo – tso:topo + Δclock - ΔDM + ΔRʘ +ΔEʘ + ΔSʘ + Δ GW

(3)
As our spacecraft size and mass will be negligible when compared to the Earth and less likely to
travel around sun in elliptical path, so that Roemer delay and Einstein delay can be neglected. But
as we travel space we may have to come across large planets or stars like Alpha Centauri. With
the situations we may have to consider Shapiro delay.
As we have the expected Time of arrival data on Solar system barycenter frame, we always have
to convert our observed Time of arrival phase different with expected value for coherent.
Δclock = (ń∙rs)/c (9)
ń  unit direction to the pulsar
rs  Spacecraft position relative to SSB
So if accurate detector position is known, then the time different between time of arrival of
observed and expected time of arrival can be determined. Vice versa if accurate time known by
continuous monitoring of pulsars, then the position of spacecraft and solar system barycenter can
be calculated.
In our study we are have selected six pulsars for our database and for further future spacecraft
navigations (Chart No: 03). These pulsars are taken out from ATNF pulsar Catalogue version
1.55[12], [13].
Our selection criteria for these pulsars as follow,

 Millisecond pulsars. Because of accurate in pulsar timing and drift in rotation is very small.

This will lead to small σTOA

 Bandwidth in X-ray. As pulsars are small and distant objects their wave distortion is more

in radio frequency than X-ray frequency. As we know dispersion measure also less in X

ray frequency. So we could small area of antenna for detection.

 Small duty cycle pulsars. As σTOA ∞ η1½

 Considering celestial coordinate system we are selecting pulsars in different planes to

determine in our Earth concentric Celestial sphere. But we can later expand it to Galactic

scale with our process and technology in space travel.

 Expected Time of arrival data must have at least a five years accumulations.

 Considering spacecraft detector size we are considering pulsars with dispersion measures

of less than 100 cm-3 parsec. But it could be corrected by coherent dedispersion technique.
Chart No: 03

For example, if we try to find out the precision range of Time of Arrival of pulsar J1939+2143,
by substituting values to equation (6), we will get σTOA = 0.449 picoseconds.
We can calculate length precision with above σTOA.
Length precision = speed of wave in vacuum × σTOA.
With pulsar J1939+2143 we can calculate one directional position with precision of 0.0001346
meter/second.
Above results showing fairly reliable navigation system.
 References
1. P.S. Ray, K.S. Wood, and B.F. Phlips E.O. Hulburt, 'Spacecraft Navigation Using X-ray
Pulsars' [2006] 95, 102
2. Werner Becker, Mike G. Bernhardt, Axel Jessner, 'Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation
With Pulsars' [2013] (arXiv:1305.4842) astro-ph.HE
3. Stephen Murray , Marshall Bautz, David Burrows, Abraham Falcone, Almus Kenter,
Ralph Kraft, 'Active Pixel X-‐ray Sensor Technology Development for SMART-‐X Focal
Plane' (pdf 2011) http://smart-x.cfa.harvard.edu/doc.html
4. Christopher Shea, 'A Silicon p-i-n detector for a hybrid CMOS imaging system' [2012]
7116 () RIT <http://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses/7116/>
5. Bernard J. Rauscher-NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,‘an introduction to detectors
with an emphasis on JWST’s HAWAII-2RG (H2RG) sensor chip assemblies (SCA)’[ppt
2010] STScI Calibration Workshop 2010.
6. Suneel I. Sheikh and Darryll J. Pines, Paul S. Ray, Kent S. Wood, Michael N. Lovellette,
and Michael T. Wolff, 'Spacecraft Navigation Using X-Ray Pulsars' [2006] JCDC 49, 55.
7. B. P. Abbott et al.* (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration), 'Observation of
Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger' [February 2016] PRL 061102-1,
8. David Nice, ’ Introduction on pulsar timing’ at International Pulsar Timing Array
Workshop Morgantown, West Virginia June 2011.
9. SUNEEL I. SHEIKH and DARRYLL J. PINES, 'Recursive Estimation of Spacecraft Position and
Velocity Using X-ray Pulsar Time of Arrival Measurements' [2006] NAVIGATION: Journal of The
Institute of Navigation 149, 164.
10. Matsakis, D. N.; Taylor, J. H.; Eubanks, T. Marshall, 'A statistic for describing pulsar and clock
stabilities' [10/1997] Astron. Astrophys 924, 926
11. Hanson, J. E., “Principles of X-Ray Navigation,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA, March 1996
12. Manchester, R. N.; Hobbs, G. B.; Teoh, A.; Hobbs, M., 'The Australia Telescope
National Facility Pulsar Catalogue' [04/2005] arXiv:astro-ph 1993.
13. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, 'ATNF Pulsar
Catalogue' (version 1.55 2005) <http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/pulsar/psrcat/>
14. Derek Ross, Ray Van De Walker, Maury Markowitz, Heron, Jinian, Patrick, Michael Hardy, Mcarling,
Kosebamse, Julesd, etc.. 'Celestial Navigation' (Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia November 2016)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_navigation?oldid=752377799>

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