Spacecraft attitude control using model-based disturbance feedback control strategy

Abstract

In this paper, the performance of the spacecraft attitude control system is enhanced using model-based disturbance feedback control (DFC) strategy in the presence of disturbance. This control strategy is applied to a single-axis spacecraft attitude control with thruster, reaction wheel, and magnetic torqrod actuators, separately. An anti-windup observer-based modified PI-D is utilized for each actuation system as a main controller. The controller gains are tuned using genetic algorithm when the time average of absolute value of pointing error is chosen as an objective function. The performance of DFC with the modified PI-D controller is investigated under disturbance and model uncertainties. The numerical simulation shows that the DFC strategy can reject disturbance effect and improve the pointing error for the three mentioned actuators; however, for a very large value of external disturbance, a critical value for uncertainty is observed for the thruster lag at which the pointing error is suddenly increased. For this critical value, the control system cannot tolerate any longer lag uncertainty in comparison with the two other actuation systems. Increasing the value of disturbance decreases the tolerable value of uncertainty in the thruster lag.

An active force controlled of small CMG-based satellite

“…However, the internal disturbance torques generated by the CMG system due to uncertainties, electromechanical interference, jitter and misalignment of the actuator as well as the external disturbance torques from the space environment such as aerodynamics drag, solar radiation pressure and magnetic torque can significantly affect the attitude control performance of the satellite (Cheon et al , 2011; Bohlouri et al , 2018; Weiss et al , 2018). This situation hinders high performance missions from being successfully executed, thus limits the operational envelope of the CMG system especially for a high precision pointing mission (Salleh and Suhadis, 2015).…”

Application of reliability-based robust optimization in spacecraft attitude control with PWPF modulator under uncertainties

“…In the control literature, when the derivative is fed back, instead of a derivative in forward path, the controller is denoted by PI-D. The observer-based PID is an anti-windup modification, utilized in on-off satellite attitude control using PWPF modulator [39]. To reduce the total of design variables and computational burden, quasi-normalized equations are utilized as treated in [20].…”