%0 Journal Article %A YuXiang Peng %A Wayne A. Scales %A Thom R. Edwards %T GPS-based satellite formation flight simulation and applications to ionospheric remote sensing %D 2020 %R 10.1002/navi.354 %J NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation %P 3-21 %V 67 %N 1 %X The Virginia Tech Formation Flying Testbed (VTFFTB), a GNSS-based hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation testbed for spacecraft formation flight, is developed and applied to ionospheric remote sensing. The current VTFFTB consists of GNSS RF hardware signal simulators, multi-constellation multifrequency GNSS receivers, a navigation and control system, an STK visualization system, and an ionospheric remote sensing system. GPS signals are emulated using GNSS simulator scenarios that include ionospheric phenomena. A formation of two spacecraft (“chief” and “deputy”) is considered. GNSS receiver data are used to produce space-based Total Electron Content (TEC) and scintillation measurements. A reference low Earth orbit (LEO) scenario is benchmarked with past simulation results to validate functionality. A LEO formation flying mission is designed to probe two Equatorial Spread F (ESF) scenarios with plasma bubbles. The results investigate the structure of ionospheric irregularities and demonstrate that the GPS-based satellite formation is able to measure vertical electron density by differencing 1D GPS vertical TEC. %U https://navi.ion.org/content/navi/67/1/3.full.pdf