Abstract
The inter-satellite relative navigation method—based on radio frequency (RF) range and angle measurements—offers good autonomy and high precision, and has been successfully applied to two-satellite formation missions. However, two main challenges occur when this method is applied to multi-microsatellite formations: (i) the implementation difficulty of the inter-satellite RF angle measurement increases significantly as the number of satellites increases; and (ii) there is no high-precision, scalable RF measurement scheme or corresponding multi-satellite relative navigation algorithm that supports multi-satellite formations. Thus, a novel multi-satellite relative navigation scheme based on inter-satellite RF range and angle measurements is proposed. The measurement layer requires only a small number of chief satellites, and a novel distributed multi-satellite range measurement scheme is adopted to meet the scalability requirement. An inter-satellite relative navigation algorithm for multi-satellite formations is also proposed. This algorithm achieves high-precision relative navigation by fusing the algorithm and measurement layers. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme requires only three chief satellites to perform inter-satellite angle measurements. Moreover, with the typical inter-satellite measurement accuracy and an inter-satellite distance of around 1 km, the proposed scheme achieves a multi-satellite relative navigation accuracy of ~30 cm, which is about the same as the relative navigation accuracy of two-satellite formations. Furthermore, decreasing the number of chief satellites only slightly degrades accuracy, thereby significantly reducing the implementation difficulty of multi-satellite RF angle measurements.
Highlights
Microsatellites are relatively low cost and have a short development cycle and excellent flexibility
In the proposed multi-satellite relative navigation scheme, inter-satellite angle measurements are performed by the chief satellites and inter-satellite range measurements are performed by both the chief and deputy satellites
The multi-satellite relative navigation accuracy is negatively related to the inter-satellite distance
Summary
Microsatellites are relatively low cost and have a short development cycle and excellent flexibility. Relative navigation methods based on inter-satellite RF range and angle measurements have been studied and applied, almost all are for two-satellite formations. Wang et al [16] proposed a multi-satellite relative navigation method based on intersatellite range and angle measurements Their approach selects one chief satellite, with the others being deputy satellites, and performs inter-satellite angle measurements between the chief and deputy satellites. According to previous research by several of the authors [17], a multi-satellite measurement scheme based on time division multiple access (TDMA) could be adopted to achieve high-precision inter-satellite range measurements while effectively solving the scalability problem of frequency division multiple access (FDMA)-based or code division multiple access (CDMA)-based measurement schemes Such a scheme would fully satisfy the application requirements of multi-satellite relative navigation described above. Based on this RF measurement scheme and the idea of measuring angles among a small number of chief satellites, a multi-satellite relative navigation algorithm could be designed to construct a high-precision multi-satellite autonomous relative navigation scheme for the large-scale applications of microsatellites
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