Overview of Pulsar Navigation: Past, Present and Future Trends

Abstract

In this contribution we will provide an overview of the work that has been done on pulsar navigation and show a new direction in pulsar-based navigation research. Up until now the focus has been on X-ray pulsars, whereas our focus will be on the possibility of using radio pulsars. The radio frequency range has been neglected because the radio-frequency pulses were assumed to be too weak to detect with antennas of a reasonable size. We will demonstrate that with a relatively small antenna radio pulses can be detected even on Earth. In our discussion we will make a comparison of pulsar navigation with GNSS and the differences are analyzed in a detailed discussion on both navigation methods.