SDR-based system for satellite ranging measurements

Accurate knowledge of the position of the involved satellites, either in geosynchronous or low Earth orbits (LEO), is of paramount importance for any satellite communication system. Satellite ranging measurements are usually performed measuring the round-trip time of a marker signal transmitted and received by an Earth station (E/S). This can be done using different techniques. One of them is satellite laser ranging (SLR) consisting of a global network of observation stations measuring the round-trip time of ultrashort pulses of light transmitted to a satellite, which must be equipped with retroreflectors [1], [2]. The most common satellite ranging techniques are those employing continuous wave signals that can be codified using pseudonoise (PN) sequences [3]-[8]. These kinds of signals are widely used in geolocation applications such as GPS, GNSS, Galileo, and GLONAS.