SPECTRAL COMPRESSION POSITIONING FOR ORBITAL NAVIGATION AND SCIENCE APPLICATIONS WITH SIGNALS OF OPPORTUNITY

Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) missions require rapid satellite integration and launch, as well as on-orbit reconfiguration, to fulfill the needs of in-theatre commanders. Small satellites are needed for this operations concept, as are bus components that meet their size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements. The GPS receiver is a particularly critical component for ORS since it provides navigation and timing to the spacecraft and payload. To be truly responsive, however, the GPS receiver must be versatile and play many roles. In addition to tracking in low Earth orbit (LEO), it should also function in geostationary (GEO) and highly elliptical orbit (HEO). For maximum utility, it should also support applications such as radio occultation measurement for ionosphere mapping. Currently, no such GPS receiver exists, but Emergent Space Technologies and Loctronix Corporation have developed a technology capable of meeting all of these goals. It currently exists in a small footprint, low power terrestrial form factor developed for indoor tracking that utilizes both GPS and Signals of Opportunity (SoOP) for positioning. This receiver is currently being migrated to Cube Sat applications and will exist as a SCA compliant software defined radio waveform embedded in a low power, PnP-compliant SDR transceiver.