Time of arrival estimation in pulsar-based navigation systems

This paper focuses on the Time of Arrival (TOA) estimation problem related to new application of pulsar signals for airplane-based navigation. The aim of the paper is to propose and evaluate a possible algorithm for TOA estimation that consists of epoch folding, filtering, CFAR detection, cross-correlation and TOA calculation. The TOA estimation algorithm proposed is verified using real experimental data obtained from the Westerbork radio observatory in The Netherlands. The performance of the proposed TOA algorithm is evaluated in terms of SNR at the cross-correlator input and the TOA accuracy.