A Distributed Guidance And Control System For Satellite Constellations

Accurate Automation Corporation has developed a distributed adaptive guidance and control architecture for minimum Delta-V formation flying of satellite constellations. The innovation in this approach is that it is an extremely streamlined solution to a very difficult guidance and control problem. The guidance module of the proposed architecture is built around a simulation of a system of particles whose motion is a result of attractive and repulsive forces generated through simulated potential fields. Desirable characteristics of the guidance system are: 1) that a large number of satellites, starting at some initial conditions, can move amongst themselves to some desired final conditions with a guarantee that undesirable interactions between individual satellites will not occur, 2) that the path taken by each individual satellite can be achieved using minimum Delta-V, and 3) that the guidance system is distributed. In order to guarantee stability for the satellite constellation as a whole, we designed a distributed satellite control module with a specifiable convergence rate. This in combination with our ability to specify the convergence rate of the guidance module, allows us to ensure that each satellite will stay within a certain distance of its commanded path (tracking error has a known bound).