Effect of chip rate on the ranging accuracy in a regenerative pseudo-noise ranging system

The ranging accuracy of a pseudo-noise ranging system is mainly decided by range jitter and time delay discrimination. Many factors can affect the ranging accuracy, one of which is the chip rate. In digital signal processing, the time delay discrimination and autocorrelation function of sampled ranging sequences of different chip rates are very different. An approximation simulation model is established according to an in-phase quadrature (I/Q) correlator which is used to evaluate the time delay. Simulation results of the range jitter and time delay discrimination show that the chip rate which provides a non-integer sample-to-chip rate ratio can achieve a higher ranging accuracy, and some test results validate the simulation model. In some design missions, the simulation results may help to select an optimum sample-to-chip rate ratio to satisfy the design requirement on the ranging accuracy.