TR2017-129

MPC for Coupled Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Momentum Management of GEO Satellites using On-Off Electric Propulsion

    •  Zlotnik, D., Di Cairano, S., Weiss, A., "MPC for Coupled Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Momentum Management of GEO Satellites using On-Off Electric Propulsion", IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications, DOI: 10.1109/​CCTA.2017.8062723, August 2017.
      BibTeX TR2017-129 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Zlotnik2017aug,
      • author = {Zlotnik, David and Di Cairano, Stefano and Weiss, Avishai},
      • title = {MPC for Coupled Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Momentum Management of GEO Satellites using On-Off Electric Propulsion},
      • booktitle = {IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications},
      • year = 2017,
      • month = aug,
      • doi = {10.1109/CCTA.2017.8062723},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2017-129}
      • }
  • MERL Contacts:
  • Research Area:

    Control

Abstract:

This paper develops a model predictive control (MPC) policy for simultaneous station keeping, attitude control, and momentum management of a nadir-pointing geostationary satellite equipped with three reaction wheels and four on-off electric thrusters mounted on two boom assemblies attached to the anti-nadir face of the satellite. A closed-loop pulse-width modulation (PWM) scheme is implemented in conjunction with the MPC policy in order to generate on-off commands to the thrusters. The MPC policy is shown to satisfy all station keeping and attitude constraints while managing stored momentum, enforcing thruster constraints, and minimizing required delta-v.

 

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    •  TALK    MERL Low-Thrust GEO Satellite Control talk at Stanford University
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      • Avishai Weiss from MERL's Control and Dynamical Systems group will give a talk at Stanford's Aeronautics and Astronautics department titled: "Low-Thrust GEO Satellite Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Momentum Management via Model Predictive Control". Electric propulsion for satellites is much more fuel efficient than conventional methods. The talk will describe MERL's solution to the satellite control problems deriving from the low thrust provided by electric propulsion.
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