Pulsar Timing and Its Application for Navigation and Gravitational Wave Detection

Pulsars are natural cosmic clocks. On long timescales they rival the precision of terrestrial atomic clocks. Using a technique called pulsar timing, the exact measurement of pulse arrival times allows a number of applications, ranging from testing theories of gravity to detecting gravitational waves. Also an external reference system suitable for autonomous space navigation can be defined by pulsars, using them as natural navigation beacons, not unlike the use of GPS satellites for navigation on Earth. By comparing pulse arrival times measured on-board a spacecraft with predicted pulse arrivals at a reference location (e.g. the solar system barycenter), the spacecraft position can be determined autonomously and with high accuracy everywhere in the solar system and beyond. We describe the unique properties of pulsars that suggest that such a navigation system will certainly have its application in future astronautics. We also describe the on-going experiments to use the clock-like nature of pulsars to “construct” a galactic-sized gravitational wave detector for low-frequency (\(f_{GW}\sim 10^{-9} \text{--} 10^{-7}\) Hz) gravitational waves. We present the current status and provide an outlook for the future.     

The gravitational potential for a moving observer, the perihelionshift of Mercury, and photon deflection

Acceptance of Einstein's second postulate, combined with the Principle of Equivalence, requires the introduction of space-time curvature in the presence of massive objects. In this paper, it has been demonstrated that the radiation continuum model (RCM) of light results in a modification to Newton's static gravitational potential. Applying this modified potential to the case of Mercury's anomalous perihelion advance accounts for the entire 43" per century, and provides a form equivalent to that of GRT. Thus, this model will work equally well for any system to which it is applied, all without resorting to the space-time curvature of GRT. The same potential, applied to the problem of a solar grazing photon, gives a solution identical in form and content to that of GRT as well. Such results lead to the conclusion that these effects are not attributable to massive objects curving space-time     

Stability Measurement Problems and Techniques for Operational Airborne Pulse Doppler Radar

In the deployment of pulse Doppler (PD) radar, determination of phase and amplitude stability is the most difficult measurement problem. Unique requirements are placed on pulse and carrier stability so that the radar can perform in strong clutter. Because of subclutter visibility and sensitivity specifications, coherent noise, which is insignificant for noncoherent pulse radars, becomes extremely important. In solving the measurement problem, special support equipment was developed which is considered to have reached such a degree of refinement that it is probably one of the most technically advanced pieces of field test equipment supporting any operational radar. This paper discusses stability requirements, sources of instability, and the combination of techniques selected for verification of compliance of the PD radar with the stability requirements. The results of a program to develop special field support equipment to satisfy the measurement requirements are emphasized. Results of field experience and the special training required of military field personnel to enable them to effectively use this relatively complex support equipment are discussed.     

The Confrontation Between General Relativity and Experiment

We review the experimental evidence for Einstein’s general relativity. A variety of high precision null experiments confirm the Einstein Equivalence Principle, which underlies the concept that gravitation is synonymous with spacetime geometry, and must be described by a metric theory. Solar system experiments that test the weak-field, post-Newtonian limit of metric theories strongly favor general relativity. Binary pulsars test gravitational-wave damping and aspects of strong-field general relativity. During the coming decades, tests of general relativity in new regimes may be possible. Laser interferometric gravitational-wave observatories on Earth and in space may provide new tests via precise measurements of the properties of gravitational waves. Future efforts using X-ray, infrared, gamma-ray and gravitational-wave astronomy may one day test general relativity in the strong-field regime near black holes and neutron stars.     

Experimental study on pulse radar target probing in RFS based on interrupted transmitting and receiving

Radar target probing and measurement are challenging tasks for Radio Frequency Simulation (RFS) with pulse radar signal. Due to the long-time duration of pulse radar signal and the limited space of anechoic chamber, the reflected signal returns before pulse radar signal is fully transmitted in RFS. As a consequence, the transmitted and reflected signals are coupled at the receiver. To handle this problem, the Interrupted Transmitting and Receiving (ITR) experiment system is constructed in this paper by dividing the pulse radar signal into sub-pulses. The target echo can be obtained by transmitting and receiving the sub-pulses intermittently. Furthermore, the principles of ITR are discussed and the target probing experiments are performed with the ITR system. It is demonstrated that the ITR system can overcome the coupling between the reflected and transmitted signals. Based on the target probing results, the performance of pulse radar target probing and measurement can be verified in RFS with the ITR system.     

机载MIMO雷达空时自适应杂波对消器

针对机载多输入多输出(MIMO)雷达杂波分布呈现空时耦合特性,提出一种空时自适应杂波对消器.利用机载MIMO雷达的脉冲回波数据,构造杂波对消器的系数矩阵.通过空时自适应杂波对消器的预处理,可以有效地抑制杂波,并通过与常规空时处理算法的级联,最终可以有效提高动目标的检测性能.实现了由传统地基雷达杂波对消器向机载运动平台的推广.仿真结果表明,这种自适应杂波对消器不仅适用于正侧视雷达,对于非正侧视雷达也同样适用.     

Investigations of the Mars Upper Atmosphere with ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter

Space Science Reviews - Time measured by an ideal clock crucially depends on the gravitational potential and velocity of the clock according to general relativity. Technological advances in...     

脉冲雷达高仰角测量数据分析及处理对策

本文针对靶场主动段外弹道测量数据处理的弹道参数出现的异常趋势，分析了脉冲雷达高仰角跟踪目标过捷径点前后的测量数据分布规律，提出了用包络线对测角动态滞后量进行修正的方法，并经实战任务数据检验该方法是实用、有效的。     

Radar sensor using low probability of interception SS-FH signals

One of the best known weakness of radar sensors in defense and security applications is the necessity to radiate a signal, which can be detected by the target, so being possible (easy in fact) that the target is alerted about the presence of a radar before the radar is alerted about the presence of a target. In this context, Low Probability of Interception (LPI) Radars try to use signals that are difficult to intercept and/or identify. Spread spectrum signals are strong candidates for this application, and systems using special frequency or polyphase modulation schemes are being exploited. Frequency hopping, however, has not received much attention. The typical LPI radar at this moment of the technology is a CW-LFM radar. The simplicity of the technology is its best point. Polyphase codes, on the other hand have the inherent advantage of high instantaneous bandwidth regardless of observation time. But the complexity of the hardware is also higher. FH signals have traditionally been considered of lower performance but higher complexity, due to the difficulties to compensate the individual dopplers for the individual range cells in the receiver. One important point is that an FH radar must be clearly distinguished from an agile frequency radar. In the latter, a pulsed signal is transmitted using different frequencies from pulse to pulse. In an FH radar the frequency changes must be during the pulse. In fact, in an LPI FH radar, a CW frequency hopped signal is used. A radar system concept is proposed in which it shows how these problems can be overcome in a tracking application. Also, the signal format is analyzed under the scope of future decade digital interceptors, showing that, in fact, this kind of signal exhibits improvement in some performances and requires a hardware that is only slightly more complex than that needed for CW-LFM systems     

含环向裂纹厚壁圆筒电磁止裂的应力场分析

以具有轴对称性质、端部带有半埋藏环形裂纹的厚壁圆筒为研究对象,通过对长厚壁圆筒内外环面均匀通入超强脉冲电流进行电磁热止裂。采用复变函数方法求解了脉冲放电瞬间裂纹尖端的温度场和热应力场。在一定的超强脉冲电流作用下,由于环形裂纹尖端的电流绕流热集中效应,裂尖温升超过了金属熔点,使裂尖处金属熔化在内部形成堆焊,钝化了裂尖,并且在裂纹前缘形成了热压应力,阻止了裂纹的扩展。在此基础上还讨论了在电载荷和机械载荷共同作用下裂纹前缘的应力场。     

Prime sequences for asynchronous pulse repetition interval agileradar

We propose the use of prime sequences in pulse repetition agile radar to increase the immunity of the radar to reconnaissance and deceptive jamming. The prime sequences are mapped into state agile mapped (SAM) sequences and are used to determine the pulse repetition interval (PRI) of the radar. We show that this produces a system with low mutual interference between radars and with a low probability of ambiguous range measurement resulting in good resistance to active deceptive jamming     

Radio Interference in Helicopter-Borne Pulse Doppler Radars

Radio interference generated in a helicopter-borne pulse Doppler radar system due to rotating blades is analyzed for the case that blades are located in the far field region of the radar antenna. A first-order estimate of the blade interference power spectrum is obtained as a function of antenna depression angle and radar (helicopter) altitude and speed. Numerical calculations show that blade interference is very weak compared with the direct ground clutter. It extends, however, into the clutter-free region which causes false alarms and degrades the radar performance.     

The Mercury Laser Altimeter Instrument for the MESSENGER Mission

The Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) is one of the payload science instruments on the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission, which launched on August 3, 2004. The altimeter will measure the round-trip time of flight of transmitted laser pulses reflected from the surface of the planet that, in combination with the spacecraft orbit position and pointing data, gives a high-precision measurement of surface topography referenced to Mercury’s center of mass. MLA will sample the planet’s surface to within a 1-m range error when the line-of-sight range to Mercury is less than 1,200 km under spacecraft nadir pointing or the slant range is less than 800 km. The altimeter measurements will be used to determine the planet’s forced physical librations by tracking the motion of large-scale topographic features as a function of time. MLA’s laser pulse energy monitor and the echo pulse energy estimate will provide an active measurement of the surface reflectivity at 1,064 nm. This paper describes the instrument design, prelaunch testing, calibration, and results of postlaunch testing.     

Two Methods of Ambiguity Resolution in Pulse Doppler Weather Radars

A comparison is made of the performance of a weather Doppler radar with a staggered pulse repetition time and a radar with a random (but known) phase. As a standard for this comparison, the specifications of the forthcoming next generation weather radar (NEXRAD) are used. A statistical analysis of the spectral moment estimates for the staggered scheme is developed, and a theoretical expression for the signal-to-noise ratio due to recohering-filtering-recohering for the random phase radar is obtained. Algorithms for assignment of correct ranges to pertinent spectral moments for both techniques are presented.     

Angle/Doppler estimation in heavy-tailed clutter backgrounds

This work describes new methods on the modeling of the amplitude statistics of airborne radar clutter by means of alpha-stable distributions. We develop joint target angle and Doppler, maximum likelihood-based estimation techniques from radar measurements retrieved in the presence of impulsive uncorrelated noise modeled as an alpha-stable random process. We derive the Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) for the additive Cauchy interference scenario to assess the best case estimation accuracy which can be achieved. In addition, we introduce a new joint spatial- and Doppler-frequency high-resolution estimation technique based on the fractional lower order statistics of the measurements of a radar array. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods can be of interest in the study of space-time adaptive processing (STAP) for airborne pulse Doppler radar arrays operating in impulsive interference environments     

Space-time registration of radar and ESM using unscented Kalman filter

Space and time alignments are the prerequisites for the successful fusion of multiple sensors. A space-time registration model is proposed to estimate the system biases and to perform time synchronization together for mobile radar and electronic support measure (ESM) systems. A space-time registration model for radar and ESM is first developed, and an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is proposed to estimate the space-time biases and target states simultaneously. The posterior Cramer-Rao bounds (PCRBs) are derived for the proposed UKF registration algorithm for ESM detection probability less than or equal to one. Theoretical analyses are performed to evaluate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed method. Computer simulations show that the UKF registration algorithm is indeed effective and robust for different radar and ESM tracking scenarios.     

The application of dimensional analysis to cosmology

Cosmology as it is usually studied suffers from the problem that no criterion is known which isolates from the large class of models allowed by the equations of physics those few which are realized in Nature. To provide such a criterion, it is proposed that cosmology should be based on the study of models which are free of arbitrary scales or units, this condition being compatible with (but not identical with) the Cosmological Principle. Formally, the basis for scale-free cosmology can be expressed in a dimensional Conspiracy Hypothesis: The material parameters of a system (mass, density, pressure etc.), the constants of physics and the coordinates have realizable physical meanings only when they occur together in dimensionless combinations (-numbers) in which the components may vary with time or place but in such a manner that the variations conspire to keep the -numbers constant. The Conspiracy Hypothesis (CH) streamlines cosmology, simplifying it to the finding of a few dimensionless numbers. Applied to Einstein's general relativity, the CH yields a simple cosmological model consisting of static clusters of galaxies with inverse-square density profiles embedded in an expanding, homogeneous background. This model agrees well with the observed Universe insofar as the latter can be described by general relativity. The CH can also be applied to other theories of gravity, especially those in which the gravitational parameter G is variable, and can also in itself be taken as a basis for gravitational theory.     

爆震管内扰流片对爆震波影响的数值分析

为了研究扰流片对两相爆震过程中燃烧转爆震的影响,建立两相低雷诺数湍流爆震模型,应用二维粘性CE/SE方法进行数值求解。结果表明,爆震波压力计算值与实验压力值符合得较好,扰流片的存在能显著缩短燃烧转爆震的时间;且对一固定尺寸的爆震管,扰流片的片数和间距都存在最佳值,使得燃烧转爆震时间最短。     

Computational Algorithms for a Pseudo-Bayes Digital Radar Receiver

In this paper discrete likelihood ratio computational algorithms resulting from recent studies in detection theory are applied to the general radar detection problem in which it is desired to detect the presence or absence of a sinusoidal pulse with unknown time of arrival, frequency, and phase. The resulting optimum digital receiver structure isdetermined and computer simulation results presented.