TO THE APPLICATION OF NEW

METHODS AND TOOLS TO

IMPROVE THE ACCURACY OF
NANO-SATELLITE'S CONTROL
SYSTEMS
 Control systems are one of the main and complex systems of on-
board microsatellite equipment. For control it is necessary to know first
of all the parameters of the orientation of the object relative to the
given coordinate system. Inaccuracy in determining the orientation
parameters, in turn, leads to an incorrect execution of the control task.
        In the context of the wide application of control systems in
spacecraft, the problem of increasing the accuracy for controlling the
movement of nano-satellite’s is becoming increasingly important.
 To solve such problems, various methods and
means are used, the traditional one of which is the
Kalman filter. The Kalman filter is a recursive
method for estimating parameters, proposed in the
60's. The last century, using for work mathematical
model of the movement of the object and the
current vector of measurements.
       Despite the great popularity of the filter, a
number of serious problems arise in its
application:
          • the problem of specifying the initial
approximations of the orientation parameters,
since for certain initial conditions the filter can not
converge;
 • Linearization problem: a filter for its operation requires
a linearized motion model; Therefore, only with slow
movements (with frequent measurements), the filter can
give a satisfactory estimate of the state vector;
   • tuning problem: covariance error matrices are used in
the filter, the tuning of which strongly affects the
convergence rate and the error of the estimated state
vector.
         Each of these problems for each spacecraft is solved
in its own way, depending on the tasks assigned, so there
is no generally accepted methodology for working with
the filter.
         The complexity of the method is that, for example, for
a six-dimensional state vector, the number of parameters
to be selected is 155, and manual selection takes a very
long time.
 Structural diagram of the Kalman filter

Gk + 1, k is the perturbation matrix;

Fk + 1, k is the transition matrix of the state of the system;
wk is the perturbation vector;
Xk is the state vector of the dynamical system;
Zk is a vector of measurement; Hk is the measurement matrix;
νk is the measurement error vector.
 Other problems associated with the problems of the classical
Kalman filter are associated with the use of a more accurate non-
linearized model of errors, which takes into account:
• errors in determining scale factors;
• errors in setting the sensor sensitivity axes relative to the basic
axes of the spacecraft;
• Constant components of sensor drifts;
• errors from unbalance of sensors;
• errors in setting the sensitivity sensitivity axes relative to the
axes of the instrument base;
• errors in the displacement of the zeros of the velocity meters.
  For this model of errors, the Kalman filter's dimension greatly
increases, which requires additional on-board computer resources.
Another problem is that individual error model coefficients can be
determined if the system is in steady state. When the system is
operating in a dynamic mode, these coefficients depend on the
flight parameters, and they are not known.
 As one of the best means of improving control
accuracy, which does not require specifying a
system model and significant computing power,
was developed in 2011 by Sebastian Madgwick.
The Madgwick filter uses quaternions, which
allows you to use data from the accelerometer
and magnetometer for analytical calculations, as
well as to obtain an error in the direction of the
gyroscope in the form of a quaternion derivative
by optimization using the gradient descent
method.
 The task of the Madgwick filter is to calculate a
single orientation estimate by measuring the
accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer.
 The structure diagram of the Madgwick filter

- rate of change in orientation;

- calculated based on accelerometer measurements

and magnetometer;
β - error compensation for measuring the rate of change in
orientation
- orientation quaternion.
Modules consisting of a three-axis gyro,
accelerometer and magnetometer.
 The author of the paper cites the results of
experiments showing that the level of accuracy of
the developed filter exceeds that of the filter
based on the Kalman method:
 - less than 0.6 rms deviation in the stationary
state;
- less than 0.8 rms deviation in the mobile state.
The advantages of the Madgwick filter also include:
- cheapness of computational resources
- 277 simple arithmetic operations each filter
update;
- efficiency at low sampling rates (e.s 10 Hz).
 Another promising option is the possibility
of introducing a fuzzy neural network into the
control systems.
  The concept of fuzzy logic was introduced
by the Azerbaijani professor Lutfi-Zade in
1965.
 In his work, the notion of a set was extended by the
assumption that the membership of an element to a set
can take any values in the interval [0 ... 1], and not just 0
or 1, such sets were called fuzzy.
       Due to their inherent properties, there is no need to
compile a mathematical model and, consequently, there
are no problems associated with increasing the
dimensionality of systems and the inability to analytically
record the model of errors.
 The use of fuzzy logic allows to ensure the
formalization of a complex object at the level
of relatively simple rules, and the use of
neural networks ensures the adaptability of
control systems. The joint use of the
apparatus of fuzzy logic and artificial neural
networks allows solving a large range of
problems of automatic control: the tasks of
synthesis, identification, adaptive and robust
control, and others.
Let's list the advantages of neural network systems over conventional ones,
which are manifested only when solving difficultly-algorithmizable problems:
1) neural networks make decisions based on experience acquired by them
independently; "Independently" in this case means that the creator of the
system does not need to establish the relationships between the input data
and the necessary solution, spending time on a variety of statistical
processing, selecting a mathematical apparatus, creating and testing
mathematical models;
2) the decision made by the neural network is not categorical; the network
issues a solution along with a degree of confidence in it, which leaves the
user able to critically evaluate the result;
3) the neural network allows modeling the decision-making situation;
4) neural networks issue a response quickly (fractions of a second), which
allows them to be used in various dynamic systems that require immediate
decision-making;
5) neural networks in the tasks of correction of the classification model,
minimization of training parameters, etc. allow to simplify the process of
creating expert systems, to determine the directions of scientific search;
6) neural networks are resistant to destruction and interference;
7) neural networks have a high level of parallelization of algorithms.
Thank you for your
attention!