CONCEPTION OF QUASI TIME-OPTIMAL RECEDING HORIZON CONTROL ALGORITHM APPLICATION TO CONTINUOUS-THRUST ORBITAL RENDEZVOUS

This paper presents conception of solution for orbital rendezvous between an active chaser satellite and nonmaneuvering target object which is moving in a known circular orbit. The variable-mass chaser satellite is equipped with a continuous-thrust propulsion. The aim of the work is to find a control resulting in quasi-optimal rendezvous trajectory. This work approaches the problem using model predictive control. A proposal of solution is based on a version of Quasi Time-Optimal Receding Horizon Control (QTO-RHC) algorithm. This method is noise resistant and able to effectively handle with various constraints. In this survey an optimization performance measure is expressed by a compromise between the transfer time and integral of squared control signal (expenditure of fuel). The problem includes constraints on amount of used fuel and approach velocity to match the velocity of the docking port. The paper contains also results for simplified case.