Attitude estimation of satellite using the extended kalman filter

Abstract EN

Computer simulation (Simulink–Matlab 7.4.4.a) have been developed to estimate the angular velocity and the attitude in terms of the quaternions of a proposed low earth orbit satellite from noisy measurements using the extended Kalman filter.

The dynamic and Kinematic models of the rigid spacecraft were distorted by external torques (atmospheric drag, solar radiation, Earth magnetic field interaction with the dipole moment of the satellite , …etc.) .These torques were represented by white noise .The extended Kalman filter was modeled inside the embedded Matlab function .

Linearization of the state space transition matrix of the spacecraft was performed by using the Jacobian matrix.

Simulation results showed that the estimated attitude parameters were approximately close to the calculated values.