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arXiv · 1806.03685

CAMELOT - Concept study and early results for onboard data processing and GPS-based timestamping

Abstract

Due to recent advances in nanosatellite technology, it is now feasible to integrate scintillators with an effective area of hundreds of square-centimeters on a single three-unit cubesat. We present the early test results for the digital payload electronics developed for the proposed CAMELOT (Cubesats Applied for MEasuring and LOcalising Transients) mission. CAMELOT is a fleet of nanosatellites intended to do full-sky monitoring and perform accurate timing-based localization of gamma-ray transients. Here we present the early results on the GPS timestamping capabilities of the CAMELOT payload electronics, concluding that the investigated setup is capable to timestamp the received gamma-ray photons with an accuracy and precision better than 0.02 millisecond, which corresponds to a timing based localization accuracy of $\sim 3.5^{\prime}$. Further refinements will likely allow us to improve the timing accuracy down to the sub-microsecond level.

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András Pál, László Mészáros, Norbert Tarcai, Norbert Werner, Jakub Řípa, Masanori Ohno, Kento Torigoe, Koji Tanaka, Nagomi Uchida, Gábor Galgóczi, Yasushi Fukazawa, Tsunefumi Mizuno, Hiromitsu Takahashi, Kazuhiro Nakazawa, Zsolt Várhegyi, Teruaki Enoto, Hirokazu Odaka, Yuto Ichinohe, Zsolt Frei, László Kiss. 2018-06-10. CAMELOT - Concept study and early results for onboard data processing and GPS-based timestamping. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.03685

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