Attitude and vibration control of a large flexible space-based antenna

Abstract

The problem of control systems synthesis is considered for controlling the rigid body attitude and elastic motion of a large deployable space based antenna. Two methods for control systems synthesis are considered. The first method utilizes the stability and robustness properties of the controller consisting of torque actuators and collocated attitude and rate sensors. The second method is based on the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control theory. A combination of the two methods, which results in a two level hierarchical control system, is also briefly discussed. The performance of the controllers is analyzed by computing the variances of pointing errors, feed misalignment errors and surface contour errors in the presence of sensor and actuator noise