Development of a Preliminary Formation-Flying Testbed for Satellite Relative Navigation and Control

This research develops a GPS-based formation-flying testbed (FFTB) for formation navigation and control. The FFTB is a simulator in which spacecraft simulation and modeling software and loop test capabilities are integrated for test and evaluation of spacecraft navigation and formation control technologies. The FFTB is composed of a GPS measurement simulation computer, flight computer, environmental computer for providing true environment data and 3D visualization computer. The testbed can be simulated with one to two spacecraft, thus enabling a variety of navigation and control algorithms to be evaluated. In a formation flying simulation, GPS measurement are generated by a GPS measurement simulator to produce pseudorange, carrier phase measurements, which are collected and exchanged by the flight processors and subsequently processed in a navigation filter to generate relative and/or absolute state estimates. These state estimates are the fed into control algorithm, which are used to generate maneuvers required to maintain the formation. In this manner, the flight processor also serves as a test platform for candidate formation control algorithm. Such maneuvers are fed back through the controller and applied to the modeled truth trajectories to close simulation loop. Currently, The FFTB has a closed-loop capability of simulating a satellite navigation solution using software based GPS measurement, we move forward to improve using SPIRENT GPS RF signal simulator and space-based GPS receiver