Antenna Configuration Method for RF Measurement Based on DOPs in Satellite Formation Flying

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF) measurement technology provides a relative navigation solution that can be of great importance to have significant potential for application to the satellite groups. With the development of the RF relative measurement sensors, it is found that the antenna configuration of the sensors affects the precision of relative position and attitude measurement. This study proposes improvements to the precision of the sensors by the virtue of the optimal antenna configuration. Furthermore, the concept of dilution of precision (DOP) is extended to the RF relative measurement sensors, and a new dilution called IDOP is proposed as a benchmark to determine the precision of relative position and attitude measurement in engineering applications of the space mission. In order to select the optimal antenna configuration in real time in a scene where the intersatellite position and attitude change dynamically, this study presents an optimal antenna configuration selection strategy and models the antenna configuration selection as a combinatorial optimization problem. Furthermore, the genetic algorithm (GA) with two encoding mechanisms is proposed to solve this problem. Finally, numerical results are presented to verify the robustness.