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The presence of bias in measurement of rate gyros is a performance limiting factor for satellite attitude determination systems. Gyro bias is usually handled by Kalman filtering methods which are mostly based on linearization approaches and lack global convergence properties. On the other hand, the existing asymptotically convergent nonlinear observers take into account the gyro bias only when multiple vector measurements are available. We present an asymptotically convergent attitude estimator which uses only one vector measurement and a rate gyro whose output is contaminated with an unknown and constant bias. The effect of unknown bias is compensated by means of a parameter adaptation law.... 

Time delay in attitude determination systems is unavoidable and it is usually caused by low-quality data sampling, poor sensor synchronization, momentary sensor outage or operational restrictions of sensors. Despite its performance-degrading effect, time delay has been widely neglected in the existing attitude estimation methods. This paper presents a general framework for design of attitude estimators with and without SO(3) manifold restriction by assuming that measurement of a single vector measurement is available with time delay. Also, measurement of rigid-body angular velocity is considered available with an unknown bias. The proposed estimator guarantees global and asymptotic... 

Time delay in the evaluation of the attitude of a rigid body can significantly hinder the performance of the attitude control system. In this brief, we propose a dynamically smooth control law that guarantees asymptotic convergence of the rigid body attitude and angular velocity to their desired values in the presence of delayed attitude measurement. We assume that the moment-of-inertia matrix of the body is unknown. The control law includes a matrix gain that is computed by solving a delay-dependent and time-varying matrix differential equation. It is shown that the solvability of the matrix differential equation depends on a uniform controllability condition, which can be verified a priori... 

This study investigates the effect of noisy measurements of the angular rate in a non-linear attitude estimator for satellites. The attitude estimator uses measurement of a single attitude sensor such as Sun, Earth-horizon, star tracker or magnetometer together with a rate gyro, and guarantees exponential convergence of the attitude estimation error to zero under a no-noise condition. In view of a realistic situation where the presence of noise in gyro measurement is not negligible, this study presents stochastic and deterministic upper bounds for the attitude estimation error resulting from noisy angular rate measurement. A realistic simulation is presented to illustrate the results  

The existing methods in attitude control of satellites are based on employing the estimate of satellite attitude which is usually generated by using multiple vector measurements. In this paper we propose an output feedback control law that directly uses a single vector measurement and gyro, and without any need for estimating the satellite attitude. The output feedback gain is computed by solving a generalized Riccati time varying differential equation. We assume the moment-of-inertia matrix of satellite is unknown. The controller guarantees asymptotic convergence of the attitude to its desired value. A realistic simulation is presented where a magnetometer is used to provide the single... 

This paper investigates the effect of noisy measurements of the angular rate in a nonlinear attitude estimator for satellites. The attitude estimator uses measurement of a single attitude sensor such as sun, earth horizon, star tracker or magnetometer together with a rate gyro, and guarantees exponential convergence of the attitude estimation error to zero under no noise condition. This paper presents stochastic and deterministic upper bounds for the attitude estimation error affected by the noise in gyro. A realistic simulation is presented to illustrate the results  

This paper presents a dynamically smooth nonlinear observer for satellite attitude determination. The proposed observer uses a 3-axis gyro and a single vector measurement to estimate the attitude of a satellite. The proposed observer preserves orthogonality of the estimated attitude matrix for all time. Almost global and exponential convergence of the estimated attitude to its true value is proven without persistency of excitation conditions. The convergence rate is shown to depend on properties of certain time varying reference vectors expressed in inertial frame. A procedure for maximizing a lower bound of the convergence rate is also presented. Performance of the proposed observer is... 

Most existing methods for satellite attitude control assume that full knowledge of satellite attitude is available by algebraic manipulation of at least two vector measurements from attitude sensors such as Sun, Earth-horizon, Earth-magnetic or star tracker sensors. Kalman filtering is usually used when only one vector measurement is available, however, asymptotic stability of nonlinear and uncertain dynamics of satellite is not guaranteed in this case. This technical note presents a coupled nonlinear estimator-controller for satellite attitude determination and control by using a 3-axis gyro and a single vector measurement for a fully actuated satellite. We assume that the moment-of-inertia...