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Article

High Signal-to-Noise Ratio Method Without Phase Deviation for X-Ray Pulsar Profile Acquisition

1
School of Aerospace Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
2
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, Beijing 100048, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Aerospace 2026, 13(7), 611; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13070611
Submission received: 18 May 2026 / Revised: 30 June 2026 / Accepted: 1 July 2026 / Published: 3 July 2026
(This article belongs to the Section Astronautics & Space Science)

Abstract

High-quality X-ray pulsar observation profiles are vital for investigating both their physical properties and navigation applications. Conventional profile extraction relies on epoch folding, whose performance is constrained by observation duration and bin size, often leading to poor-quality profiles or even failure under extremely low-photon conditions. This paper proposes a novel method that directly extracts high-quality profile frequency spectra merely by statistical analysis of photon sequences followed by the reconstruction of time domain waveforms. Monte Carlo simulations and real observational data demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits higher correlation coefficients and signal-to-noise ratios than those obtained using traditional epoch folding, and also outperforms the Fourier-series-based frequency cutoff method. Moreover, comparable profile quality can be achieved using an order of magnitude fewer photons than required by epoch folding. The lower the photon count, the more significant the improvement, making the method especially suitable for small-area detectors and resource-constrained observation scenarios.
Keywords: pulsar; X-ray pulsar navigation; observation profiles; frequency spectrum pulsar; X-ray pulsar navigation; observation profiles; frequency spectrum

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Zhang, Z.; Fang, H.; Bao, W.; Li, X. High Signal-to-Noise Ratio Method Without Phase Deviation for X-Ray Pulsar Profile Acquisition. Aerospace 2026, 13, 611. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13070611

AMA Style

Zhang Z, Fang H, Bao W, Li X. High Signal-to-Noise Ratio Method Without Phase Deviation for X-Ray Pulsar Profile Acquisition. Aerospace. 2026; 13(7):611. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13070611

Chicago/Turabian Style

Zhang, Zewei, Haiyan Fang, Weimin Bao, and Xiaoping Li. 2026. "High Signal-to-Noise Ratio Method Without Phase Deviation for X-Ray Pulsar Profile Acquisition" Aerospace 13, no. 7: 611. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13070611

APA Style

Zhang, Z., Fang, H., Bao, W., & Li, X. (2026). High Signal-to-Noise Ratio Method Without Phase Deviation for X-Ray Pulsar Profile Acquisition. Aerospace, 13(7), 611. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace13070611

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