Experimental studies of localization method using round-trip range measurements

A method for accurate localization of a space rover on a surface of a small planetary body has been developed for guiding it to a destination point. The method uses round-trip propagation delay of radio waves, range, between a mother spacecraft and the rover. Numerical simulations proved that the developed method is able to estimate the position of the rover with reasonable accuracy assuming that the measurement noise is Gaussian. In this paper, experimental results are presented, which are conducted in a laboratory via range measurement tool, a total station by TOPCON. These results proved that the estimation converges even the measurement data includes real noise existed in the range measurement tool, which support the feasibility of the proposed method of estimation.