Free Space Optical Communication (FSOC) is a communication method using visible light or infrared light. To perform optical communication through micro satellites, attitude control considering Pointing Acquisition & Tracking (PAT) is required. In ...
Free Space Optical Communication (FSOC) is a communication method using visible light or infrared light. To perform optical communication through micro satellites, attitude control considering Pointing Acquisition & Tracking (PAT) is required. In this study, PAT is divided into three stages: Bus Initialization, Coarse Pointing, and Fine Pointing. Among the PAT stages, this paper deals with the design of the attitude control system up to Coarse Pointing.
Existing low-orbit FSOC microsatellites have limited communication time and duration. In addition, system complexity is high because many customized attitude determination sensors are required. Therefore, this study aims to design an attitude control system to achieve a FSOC of more than 10 minutes in terms of duration, which is a limitation of current optical communication research.
In this study, simulation is performed assuming the BUS system as a rigid body to analyze the performance for VISION mission. Considering the detailed design of the microsatellite, a flexible mode in which the gain value of the disturbance increases is estimated. And, based on the flexible mode analysis, an optimal operating range of the wheel is derived. Afterwards, by estimating the payload beam incident angle bias, this paper proposes an attitude control algorithm that can compensate for the limitations of the existing short duration and reduce system complexity.
The attitude control analysis was performed using MATLAB. Based on the detailed design of the satellite, the pointing knowledge of the attitude sensor was differentially applied in consideration of the sensor constraints. Relative navigation performance using L1 and L2 signals was reflected, and the initial attitude was a random quaternion. Disturbances caused by J2, air drag, solar radiation pressure, residual dipole moment, and jitter were reflected. Since the analysis model is designed assuming a rigid body, the reliable CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) method was used to limit the reaction wheel operating range in which the body can be treated as a rigid body. Afterwards, results of the MATLAB simulation & SW simulator were compared to determine if there was a difference between the design model and the hardware-based SW simulator.
As a result of thermal and structural analysis, it was confirmed that the beam incident angle bias change was within 50 μrad for 4 orbital periods, so the bias change during FSOC was initially treated as a fixed value. In addition, in the process of compensating the bias, an algorithm was constructed to compensate by lowering the noise level so that the pointing stability does not deteriorate. The final attitude control system performance was derived through Monte Carlo simulation, and the pointing stability was derived within 72.21 arcsec (3σ) and the pointing accuracy was within 10.18 arcsec (3σ).
In this study, an algorithm for correcting the bias of the optical axis was devised to maintain attitude control performance. In addition, since closed-loop control is performed using commercial products, system complexity is low, and reliability is high. Therefore, it can contribute to the development of multiple optical communication satellites based on efficient use of space and a single optical system.