Improved Frequency and Time of Arrival Estimation Methods in Search and Rescue System Based on MEO Satellites

摘要

This paper deals with several key points including parameter estimation such as frequency of arrival (FOA), time of arrival (TOA) estimation algorithm and signal processing techniques in Medium-altitude Earth Orbit Local User Terminals (MEOLUT) based on Cospas-Sarsat Medium-altitude Earth Orbit Search and Rescue system (MEOSAR). Based on an analytical description of distress beacon, improved TOA and FOA estimation methods have been proposed. An improved FOA estimation method which integrates bi-FOA measurement, FFT method, Rife algorithm and Gaussian window is proposed to improve the accuracy of FOA estimation. In addition, TPD algorithm and signal correlation techniques are used to achieve a high performance of TOA estimation. Parameter estimation problems are solved by proposed FOA/TOA methods under quite poor Carrier-to-Noise (C/N0). A number of simulations are done to show the improvements. FOA and TOA estimation error are lower than 0.1Hz and 11 μs respectively which is very high system requirement for MEOSAR system MEOLUT.