Concept design, modeling and station-keeping attitude control of an earth observation platform

Abstract

The stratosphere airship provides a unique and promising platform for earth observation. Researches on the project design and control scheme for earth observation platforms are still rarely documented. Nonlinear dynamics, model uncertainties, and external disturbances contribute to the difficulty in maneuvering the stratosphere airship. A key technical challenge for the earth observation platform is station keeping, or the ability to remain fixed over a geo-location. This paper investigates the conceptual design, modeling and station-keeping attitude control of the near-space earth observation platform. A conceptual design of the earth observation platform is presented. The dynamics model of the platform is derived from the Newton-Euler formulation, and the station-keeping control system of the platform is formulated. The station-keeping attitude control approach for the platform is proposed. The multi-input multi-output nonlinear control system is decoupled into three single-input single-output linear subsystems via feedback linearization, the attitude controller design is carried out on the new linear systems using terminal sliding mode control, and the global stability of the closed-loop system is proven by using the Lyapunov theorem. The performance of the designed control system is simulated by using the variable step Runge-Kutta integrator. Simulation results show that the control system tracks the commanded attitude with an error of zero, which verify the effectiveness and robustness of the designed control system in the presence of parametric uncertainties. The near-space earth observation platform has several advantages over satellites, such as high resolution, fast to deploy, and convenient to retrieve, and the proposed control scheme provides an effective approach for station-keeping attitude control of the earth observation platform.