Adaptive Algorithm to Determine the Coverage Belt for Agile Satellite with Attitude Maneuvers

Abstract

Agile satellites are gaining prevalence in Earth observation missions since they can acquire images over a wide area on the Earth’s surface while simultaneously carrying out attitude maneuvers. The coverage belt of a single satellite refers to the sensor’s swath on the Earth’s surface as the satellite moves on its orbit. This paper presents an adaptive interpolation algorithm for the rapid determination of the coverage belt of a single agile satellite, which is possibly implementing attitude maneuvers. The contribution of this paper consists of two parts. First, an analytical model to compute the coverage belt of an agile satellite on the Earth’s surface is established by involving all the projections of the sensor’s field of view. Two bounding curves of the coverage belt are analytically determined by a series of discrete swath points, which are related to the position, velocity of the satellite and the shape of the sensor’s view field at a specific moment. Second, an adaptive interpolation algorithm, featured with autonomously searching for the interpolation points is utilized to rapidly compute the waveforms of coordinate values of the swath points on the three axes of the Earth Centered Fixed reference frame. Numerical simulation using the Chinese GAOFEN-1-02 satellite is implemented to demonstrate the determination of its coverage belt on the Earth’s surface. This adaptive algorithm is appropriate for all orbital types and can reduce over 99% computation cost in the determination of bounding curves compared with the traditional step-by-step method.