Consensus Based Task Allocation for Angles-Only Local Catalog Maintenance of Satellite Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decentralized task allocation algorithm for satellites to collaboratively maintain local catalogs using angles-only measurements, improving efficiency and accuracy in relative state estimation.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel decentralized task allocation method tailored for angles-only satellite observations, enhancing coordination and catalog accuracy.

Findings

Significantly reduces catalog uncertainty compared to existing methods.

Achieves better fuel efficiency in satellite observation scheduling.

Outperforms current approaches on the uncertainty-fuel Pareto frontier.

Abstract

In order for close proximity satellites to safely perform their missions, the relative states of all satellites and pieces of debris must be well understood. This presents a problem for ground based tracking and orbit determination since it may not be practical to achieve the required accuracy. Using space-based sensors allows for more accurate relative state estimates, especially if multiple satellites are allowed to communicate. Of interest to this work is the case where several communicating satellites each need to maintain a local catalog of communicating and non-communicating objects using angles-only limited field of view (FOV) measurements. However, this introduces the problem of efficiently scheduling and coordinating observations among the agents. This paper presents a decentralized task allocation algorithm to address this problem and quantifies its performance in terms of fuel usage and overall catalog uncertainty via numerical simulation. It was found that the new method significantly outperforms the uncertainty-fuel Pareto frontier formed by current approaches.