The BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) is one of the four global navigation satellite systems. More attention has been paid to the positioning algorithm of the BDS. Based on the study on the Kalman filter (KF) algorithm, this paper proposed a novel algorithm for the BDS, named as the minimum dispersion coefficient criteria Kalman filter (MDCCKF) positioning algorithm. The MDCCKF algorithm adopts minimum dispersion coefficient criteria (MDCC) to remove the influence of noise with an alpha-stable distribution (ASD) model which can describe non-Gaussian noise effectively, especially for the pulse noise in positioning. By minimizing the dispersion coefficient of the positioning error, the MDCCKF assures positioning accuracy under both Gaussian and non-Gaussian environment. Compared with the original KF algorithm, it is shown that the MDCCKF algorithm has higher positioning accuracy and robustness. The MDCCKF algorithm provides insightful results for potential future research.

This paper proposes an improved method of solving the permutation problem inherent in frequency-domain of convolutive blind source separation (BSS). It combines a novel inter-frequency dependence measure: the power ratio of separated signals, and a simple but effective bin-wise permutation alignment scheme. The proposed method is easy to implement and surpasses the conventional ones. Simulations have shown that it can provide an almost ideal solution of the permutation problem for a case where two or three sources were mixed in a room with a reverberation time of 130 ms.

A spinal code is the type of rateless code, which has been proved to be capacity- achieving over both a binary symmetric channel (BSC) and an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Rateless spinal codes employ a hash function as a coding kernel to generate infinite pseudo-random symbols. A good hash function can improve the perfor- mance of spinal codes. In this paper, a lightweight hash function based on sponge structure is designed. A permutation function of registers is a nonlinear function. Feedback shift registers are used to improve randomness and reduce bit error rate (BER). At the same time, a pseudo-random number generator adopts a layered and piecewise combination mode, which further encrypts signals via the layered structure, reduces the correlation between input and output values, and generates the piecewise random numbers to compensate the shortcoming of the mixed linear congruence output with fixed length. Simulation results show that the designed spinal code with the lightweight hash function outperforms the original spinal code in aspects of the BER, encoding time and randomness.

One of the most critical systems of any satellite is the Electrical Power System (EPS) and without any available energy, the satellite would simply stop to function. Therefore, the presented research within this paper investigates the areas relating to the satellite EPS with the main focus towards the CubeSat platform. In this paper, an appropriate EPS architecture with the suitable control policy for CubeSat missions is proposed. The suggested control strategy combines two methods, the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) and the Battery Charge Regulation (BCR), in one power converter circuit, in order to extract the maximum power of the Photovoltaic (PV) system and regulate the battery voltage from overcharging. This proposed combined control technique is using a Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) strategy serving two main purposes, the MPPT and BCR. Without an additional battery charger circuit and without switching technique between the two controllers, there are no switching losses and the efficiency of the charging characteristic can be increased by selecting this proposed combined FLC. By testing a space-based PV model with the proposed EPS architecture, some simulation results are compared to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed control strategy over the conventional strategies such as Perturb and Observe (P&O) and FLC with a Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller.