A Robust Periodic Controller for Spacecraft Attitude Tracking

This paper presents a novel approach for robust periodic attitude control of satellites. Respecting the periodicity of the satellite dynamics in the synthesis allows to achieve constant performance and robustness requirements over the orbit. The proposed design follows a mixed sensitivity control design employing a physically motivated weighting scheme. The controller is calculated using a novel structured linear time-periodic output feedback synthesis with guaranteed optimal L2-performance. The synthesis poses a convex optimization problem and avoids grid-wise evaluations of coupling conditions inherent for classical periodic H-infinity-synthesis. Moreover, the controller has a transparent and easy to implement structure. A solar power plant satellite is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for periodic satellite attitude control.