Power Allocation in Inter-Satellite Ranging Measurement of Navigation Constellation

The performance of the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) can be enhanced significantly by introducing inter-satellite ranging (ISR). Due to the satellite battery resource constraints, energy-saving is a critical issue for ISR. This paper presents an approach of power allocation in ISR of navigation constellation. Because of the high precision space-time reference of GNSS, the satellite transmitter can recognize the channel dynamic parameters of ISR by means of the navigation message. Based on the dynamic information, the optimal power allocation can be calculated to guarantee the given quality of service (QoS) of ISR before the ranging is established. This paper presents the recognition process of dynamic parameters and derives the closed form expression for the optimal power allocation. Furthermore, the real GPS orbit data is used to evaluate this method. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the total energy consumption can be reduced significantly.