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AUTHOR(S):

Chingiz Hajiyev, Demet Cilden

 

TITLE

Nontraditional Approach to Satellite Attitude Estimation

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KEYWORDS

Satellite attitude estimation, magnetometer, sun sensor, extended Kalman filter, angular velocity, nontraditional approach

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the development of nontraditional attitude determination system that can rely on vector measurements. Vectors coming from the selected sensor data and developed models can be placed in Wahba’s problem. The system uses Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method to minimize the Wahba’s loss function and determine the attitude of the satellite. In order to obtain the attitude of the satellite with desired accuracy an extended Kalman filter (EKF) for satellite’s angular motion parameter estimation is designed. Different algorithms with or w/o gyro bias estimation are considered and compared in order to achieve better accuracy on the attitude angles and angular rates. Also, a rate gyro is added to the algorithm in addition to the vector measurements and their biases can be estimated. The SVD and EKF algorithms are combined to estimate the attitude angles and angular velocities. Besides, the proposed algorithm and traditional approach using nonlinear measurements are compared and concluded that SVD/EKF gives more accurate results for most of the time intervals. The algorithm can be used for lowcost small satellites where using high power consuming, expensive, and fragile gyroscopes for determining spacecraft attitude are not reasonable.

Cite this paper

Chingiz Hajiyev, Demet Cilden. (2016) Nontraditional Approach to Satellite Attitude Estimation. International Journal of Control Systems and Robotics, 1, 19-28