A Robust Periodic Controller for Spacecraft Attitude Tracking

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new robust periodic attitude controller for satellites that leverages the periodic nature of satellite dynamics to ensure consistent performance and robustness throughout the orbit.

Contribution

It proposes a structured linear time-periodic output feedback synthesis method with guaranteed L2-performance, avoiding complex grid evaluations of classical approaches.

Findings

Effective control of satellite attitude demonstrated on a solar power satellite.

Controller maintains constant performance over the orbit.

Structured design simplifies implementation and guarantees robustness.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach for robust periodic attitude control of satellites. Respecting the periodicity of the satellite dynamics in the synthesis allows to achieve constant performance and robustness requirements over the orbit. The proposed design follows a mixed sensitivity control design employing a physically motivated weighting scheme. The controller is calculated using a novel structured linear time-periodic output feedback synthesis with guaranteed optimal L2-performance. The synthesis poses a convex optimization problem and avoids grid-wise evaluations of coupling conditions inherent for classical periodic H-infinity-synthesis. Moreover, the controller has a transparent and easy to implement structure. A solar power plant satellite is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for periodic satellite attitude control.