A new testing platform for attitude determination and control subsystems: Design and applications

Abstract

This paper presents a new experimental research and development platform for satellite attitude determination and control systems (ADCS). It is designed to easily accommodate any major component of a satellite ADCS. The platform provides a near-zero gravity condition using a Ball-and-Socket air bearing table that provides unconstrained satellite rotational motion. The pressurized air flow is passed through five microscale air holes carefully placed inside the socket to provide the required air gap between the socket and the ball. The platform provides full freedom of spin in the yaw axis but roll and pitch motions are constrained to angles of less than ±30 degrees. A special counter balance mechanism has been designed for a wide range of payloads that can be mounted on it. The satellite with its counter balance structure is attached to the ball and is carefully placed on the air cushion using a special mechanism. A dedicated UHF/VHF RF link is designed to allow for remote command and control of payloads under testing. All payloads will be connected to the RF system via a CAN bus.The paper discusses the detailed description of the testing platform and the challenges related to its commissioning and operation. In addition, it presents research projects that could be carried out using the platform including applying advanced robust control theory, system identification, validity tests and sensors integration and calibration in future satellite ADCSs. In particular, a multi-filters multi-sensors estimator is presented for the multiple MEMS gyros array system.

Noise Reduction of MEMS Gyroscope Based on Direct Modeling for an Angular Rate Signal

“…The noises of ARW and RRW for the gyroscope are assumed to be 0.1667°/h 0.5 and 1200°/h 1.5 , and the value of qω is set as 1000(°/h) 2 , where the filtering period is set as 0.005 s. By using Equations (9)- (11), the plot of changing trend for P(t) and K(t) are shown in Figure 1. …”

“…It is hoped to replace the traditional fiber-optics gyroscopes or as complementary sensors in the field of aviation and aerospace where requires compact sensors [2]. However, the performance of MEMS gyroscope quickly degrades over time because of high level of the noise and drift, and to date the lower accuracy is the major shortcoming that limits the application of MEMS gyroscope [3].…”

Analysis of Dynamic Performance of a Kalman Filter for Combining Multiple MEMS Gyroscopes

“…Finally, a discrete-time KF of Equation (10) for combined rate signal estimate was established. Equation (10) shows that the (1 )…”

“…Wang et al [7] designed a gyroscope array, which combines several gyroscope cells by using a unique detection mass to increase the gain of sense-mode and improve the system sensitivity. Fortunately, the technology of multi-signal fusion for the gyroscope array is becoming an effective approach to reduce the measurement noise and improve the accuracy of the MEMS gyroscope [9][10][11], which is called the technology of virtual gyroscope [11]. Its principle lies in several gyroscopes with the same specification that can be combined with each other to form a sensor array and fuse multiple outputs to obtain an optimal rate estimate with a filtering technique.…”

Signal Processing Technique for Combining Numerous MEMS Gyroscopes Based on Dynamic Conditional Correlation

“…Stubberud discussed the method of an extend Kalman filter of multiple sensors to improve the accuracy in [6]. Al-Majed and Alsuwaidan presented a multi-filters adaptive estimator to improve the angular rate accuracy by using the noise correlation in [7] but with no simulation or experimental results. Jiang and Xue used six-gyro array in [8][9][10][11].…”