Filtering of spacecraft Doppler tracking data and detection of gravitational radiation

A gravitational-radiation pulse leaves a unique trace on the Doppler tracking record of a spacecraft. In a one-way microwave link the signal appears twice in the Doppler records. In a link that is transponded (or reflected) from the spacecraft the signal is repeated three times. Similarly some of the sources of Doppler system noise also have a unique, repeated signature. These features provide a meaningful way to improve the sensitivity of proposed spacecraft tracking experiments by using an on-board clock of extremely high stability where the spacecraft and Earth stations each obtain Doppler data. We construct software filters for data from this type of experiment, and using numerical simulations we compare the sensitivity of the proposed new experiments to current ones, where two-way Doppler data are obtained.