| Abstract: | To improve the link efficiency and decrease the payloads in space explorations, a novel simultaneous communication and ranging method based on x-ray communication(XCOM) is proposed in this paper. A delicate signal symbol structure is utilized to achieve simultaneous data transmission and range measurement. With the designed symbol structure, the ranging information is imbedded into the communication signal and transmitted with it simultaneously. The range measurement is realized by the two-way transmission of the range information. To illustrate the proposed method, firstly, the principle of the method is introduced and the signal processing procedure is presented. Then, the performance of the proposed method is analyzed theoretically in various aspects, including the acquisition probability, the bit error rate, the ranging jitter,etc. Besides, numerical experiments are conducted to verify the proposed method and evaluate the system performance.The simulation results show that the proposed method is feasible and that the system performance is influenced by the parameters concerning the signal symbol structure. Compared with the previous methods, the proposed method improves the link efficiency and is beneficial for system miniaturization and integration, which could provide a potential option for future deep space explorations. |
