Abstract: The robust extended Kalman filter (REKF) is adopted to overcome the unfavorable effect of the pulsar’s position error on the pulsar’s navigation system in this paper. It is shown that the pulsar’s position error can be seen as model uncertainty, and the effect of the uncertainty can be reduced by using the robust filtering technique. The performance of the REKF is illustrated in comparison with the standard EKF. Numerical simulation shows that the REKF is more accurate than the EKF for spacecraft navigation in the presence of pulsar’s position error.

Key words: spacecraft, autonomous navigation, pulsar, extended Kalman filter, robust filter