An Antenna Tracking Profile Design for Communication with a Ground station

In order to communicate with a ground station, the tracking profile design problem for a directional antenna system is considered. Because the motions of the gimbal angles in the antenna system affect the image quality, the main object is to minimize the motion of the gimbal angles during the satellite's imaging phase. For this goal, parameter optimization problems in the imaging and maneuver phases are formulated separately in the body-frame, and solved sequentially. Also, several mechanical constraints, such as the limitation of the gimbal angle and rate, are considered in the problems. The tracking profiles of the gimbal angles in the maneuver phases are designed with N-th order polynomials, to continuously connect the tracking profiles between two imaging phases. The results confirm that if the vector trace of the desired antenna-pointing vector is within the antenna's beam-width angle, motions of the gimbal angles are not required in the corresponding imaging phase. Also, through numerical examples, it is shown that motion of the gimbal angles in the imaging phase can be minimized by the proposed design process.