Tracking Control Design Using Sliding Mode Techniques for Satellite Formation Flying

Abstract

Satellite formation flying is currently an active area of research in the aerospace engineering. So it has been researched by various authors. In this study, a tracking controller using sliding mode techniques was designed to control a satellite for the satellite formation flying. In general, Hill's equations are used to describe the relative motion of the follower satellite with respect to the leader satellite. However the modified Hill's equations considering the J_2 perturbation were used for the design of sliding mode controller. The extended Kalman filter was applied to estimate the state vector based on the measurements of relative distance and velocity between two satellites. The simulation results show that the follower satellite tracks the desired trajectory well by thruster operations based on the sliding mode control law.

Keywords

• satellite formation flying
• sliding mode control
• Hill's equations
• Kalman filter