Passivity-based distributed acquisition and station-keeping control of a satellite constellation in areostationary orbit

TL;DR

This paper introduces a passivity-based distributed control law enabling satellites to form and maintain an equally spaced constellation in areostationary orbit using only local information, with proven stability and demonstrated effectiveness.

Contribution

It develops a novel distributed control approach leveraging passivity theory for satellite constellation assembly and station-keeping in areostationary orbit.

Findings

The control law achieves stable constellation formation.

Satellites maintain desired angular velocities despite disturbances.

Simulation confirms robustness and effectiveness of the method.

Abstract

We present a distributed control law to assemble a cluster of satellites into an equally-spaced, planar constellation in a desired circular orbit about a planet. We assume each satellite only uses local information, transmitted through communication links with neighboring satellites. The same control law is used to maintain relative angular positions in the presence of disturbance forces. The stability of the constellation in the desired orbit is proved using a compositional approach. We first show the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium of the interconnected system. We then certify each satellite and communication link is equilibrium-independent passive with respective storage functions. By leveraging the skew symmetric coupling structure of the constellation and the equilibrium-independent passivity property of each subsystem, we show that the equilibrium of the interconnected system is stable with a Lyapunov function composed of the individual subsystem storage functions. We further prove that the angular velocity of each satellite converges to the desired value necessary to maintain circular, areostationary orbit. Finally, we present simulation results to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control law in acquisition and station-keeping of an equally-spaced satellite constellation in areostationary orbit despite the presence of unmodeled disturbance forces.