Fundamentals, Specifications, Architecture and Hardware Towards a Navigation System Based on Radio Pulsars

Pulsar based navigation is a novel area of research, and might once offer the possibility to man of safely traveling distances much beyond Earth. Recently, there has been work on a receiver tracking algorithm that makes use of X-ray pulsar signals. However, a system based on this would not find use on celestial bodies where an atmosphere blocks the harmful X-rays. This thesis is directed towards building a navigation system in hardware that makes use of `radio pulsars'. The navigation system may allow a receiver observing radio pulsar signals to determine its position with respect to a reference, possibly with the receiver being anywhere in the universe of interest. The system is initially intended for estimating a receiver's coordinates without a prior knowledge of the receiver position, pulsar locations relative to the receiver, as well as the expected pulsar signals. This thesis lays down the feasibility and the limitations of the system that would use radio pulsars. The work presented includes: defining the fundamentals of radio pulsar based navigation, selecting suitable signal processing algorithms, analyzing system usage scenarios and related SNR enhancement by subsystems, constructing the system architecture, and discussing a hardware prototype based on FPGAs. Another objective (which has been successfully completed) is to rate the methodology of automatic RTL generation from Simulink models.MicroelectronicsMicroelectronics & Computer EngineeringElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc