Navigation and control of large satellite formations

In recent years, there has been substantial interest in autonomous satellite formations, driven by the new technologies that enable smaller and cheaper spacecraft. Formation flying allows for mission designs, such as stereoscopic imaging, that are impractical or impossible for a single satellite. Much of the current work focuses upon small formations, which can be defined as four or less satellites in a relatively tight grouping. Next generation formations may be composed of more satellites spanning greater spatial distances. The large formation problem becomes more difficult for several reasons, including an increased amount of communication required between the satellites, and orbit perturbations, which become more important as the formation size grows. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine formation flying for large formations, and determine whether or not generalizations can be made linking the large and small formation regimes. In order to model formations with many satellites, a simulation environment was constructed in which different observers, controllers, and formation architectures can be modelled. This dissertation focuses on a decentralized control scheme, but the software is general enough to accommodate a variety of control architectures. Validation of the large formation models is accomplished by initially modelling only a pair of satellites and comparing the results against those found in the literature. As a demonstration of the theoretical results, a real-time, closed-loop, hardware-in-the-loop simulation was constructed using GPS receivers as the measurement source. A large constellation, real-time simulation system was developed that utilized the Internet to connect simulation equipment from research centers in different locations.