Preliminary Performance Analysis of Satellite Formation Flying Testbed by Attitude Tracking Experiment

This paper presents preliminary performance analysis of a satellite formation flying testbed, which is under development by Astrodynamics and Control Laboratory, Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University. A model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) with a first-order reference model is chosen to enhance the response of reaction wheel system which is subject to uncertainties caused by unmodelled dynamics and measurement noise. In addition, an on-line parameter estimation (OPE) technique based on the least square is combined to eliminate the effect of angular measurement noise by estimating the moment of inertia. Both numerical simulations and hardware experiments with MRAC support the effectiveness and applicability of the adaptive control scheme, which maintains the tracking error below 0.25 degrees for the entire time span. However, the high frequency control input generated in hardware experiment strongly suggests design modifications to reduce the effect of deadzone.