Geomagnetic orbit determination: EKF or UKF?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Wu ◽  
Ming Liu ◽  
Chengxi Zhang ◽  
Yulong Huang ◽  
Zebo Zhou

Purpose Autonomous orbit determination using geomagnetic measurements is an important backup technique for safe spacecraft navigation with a mere magnetometer. The geomagnetic model is used for the state estimation of orbit elements, but this model is highly nonlinear. Therefore, many efforts have been paid to developing nonlinear filters based on extended Kalman filter (EKF) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF). This paper aims to analyze whether to use UKF or EKF in solving the geomagnetic orbit determination problem and try to give a general conclusion. Design/methodology/approach This paper revisits the problem and from both the theoretical and engineering results, the authors show that the EKF and UKF show identical estimation performances in the presence of nonlinearity in the geomagnetic model. Findings While EKF consumes less computational time, the UKF is computationally inefficient but owns better accuracy for most nonlinear models. It is also noted that some other navigation techniques are also very similar with the geomagnetic orbit determination. Practical implications The intrinsic reason of such equivalence is because of the orthogonality of the spherical harmonics which has not been discovered in previous studies. Thus, the applicability of the presented findings are not limited only to the major problem in this paper but can be extended to all those schemes with spherical harmonic models. Originality/value The results of this paper provide a fact that there is no need to choose UKF as a preferred candidate in orbit determination. As UKF achieves almost the same accuracy as that of EKF, its loss in computational efficiency will be a significant obstacle in real-time implementation.

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolin Ning ◽  
Xin Ma ◽  
Cong Peng ◽  
Wei Quan ◽  
Jiancheng Fang

Satellite autonomous orbit determination (OD) is a complex process using filtering method to integrate observation and orbit dynamic equations effectively and estimate the position and velocity of a satellite. Therefore, the filtering method plays an important role in autonomous orbit determination accuracy and time consumption. Extended Kalman filter (EKF), unscented Kalman filter (UKF), and unscented particle filter (UPF) are three widely used filtering methods in satellite autonomous OD, owing to the nonlinearity of satellite orbit dynamic model. The performance of the system based on these three methods is analyzed under different conditions. Simulations show that, under the same condition, the UPF provides the highest OD accuracy but requires the highest computation burden. Conclusions drawn by this study are useful in the design and analysis of autonomous orbit determination system of satellites.


2020 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-439
Author(s):  
Feng Cui ◽  
Dong Gao ◽  
Jianhua Zheng

Purpose The main reason for the low accuracy of magnetometer-based autonomous orbit determination is the coarse accuracy of the geomagnetic field model. Furthermore, the geomagnetic field model error increases obviously during geomagnetic storms, which can still further reduce the navigation accuracy. The purpose of this paper is to improve the accuracy of magnetometer-based autonomous orbit determination during geomagnetic storms. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, magnetometer-based autonomous orbit determination via a measurement differencing extended Kalman filter (MDEKF) is studied. The MDEKF algorithm can effectively remove the time-correlated portion of the measurement error and thus can evidently improve the accuracy of magnetometer-based autonomous orbit determination during geomagnetic storms. Real flight data from Swarm A are used to evaluate the performance of the MDEKF algorithm presented in this study. A performance comparison between the MDEKF algorithm and an extended Kalman filter (EKF) algorithm is investigated for different geomagnetic storms and sampling intervals. Findings The simulation results show that the MDEKF algorithm is superior to the EKF algorithm in terms of estimation accuracy and stability with a short sampling interval during geomagnetic storms. In addition, as the size of the geomagnetic storm increases, the advantages of the MDEKF algorithm over the EKF algorithm become more obvious. Originality/value The algorithm in this paper can improve the real-time accuracy of magnetometer-based autonomous orbit determination during geomagnetic storms with a low computational burden and is very suitable for low-orbit micro- and nano-satellites.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bing Hua ◽  
Zhiwen Zhang ◽  
Yunhua Wu ◽  
Zhiming Chen

Purpose The geomagnetic field vector is a function of the satellite’s position. The position and speed of the satellite can be determined by comparing the geomagnetic field vector measured by on board three-axis magnetometer with the standard value of the international geomagnetic field. The geomagnetic model has the disadvantages of uncertainty, low precision and long-term variability. Therefore, accuracy of autonomous navigation using the magnetometer is low. The purpose of this paper is to use the geomagnetic and sunlight information fusion algorithm to improve the orbit accuracy. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, an autonomous navigation method for low earth orbit satellite is studied by fusing geomagnetic and solar energy information. The algorithm selects the cosine value of the angle between the solar light vector and the geomagnetic vector, and the geomagnetic field intensity as observation. The Adaptive Unscented Kalman Filter (AUKF) filter is used to estimate the speed and position of the satellite, and the simulation research is carried out. This paper also made the same study using the UKF filter for comparison with the AUKF filter. Findings The algorithm of adding the sun direction vector information improves the positioning accuracy compared with the simple geomagnetic navigation, and the convergence and stability of the filter are better. The navigation error does not accumulate with time and has engineering application value. It also can be seen that AUKF filtering accuracy is better than UKF filtering accuracy. Research limitations/implications Geomagnetic navigation is greatly affected by the accuracy of magnetometer. This paper does not consider the spacecraft’s environmental interference with magnetic sensors. Practical implications Magnetometers and solar sensors are common sensors for micro-satellites. Near-Earth satellite orbit has abundant geomagnetic field resources. Therefore, the algorithm will have higher engineering significance in the practical application of low orbit micro-satellites orbit determination. Originality/value This paper introduces a satellite autonomous navigation algorithm. The AUKF geomagnetic filter algorithm using sunlight information can obviously improve the navigation accuracy and meet the basic requirements of low orbit small satellite orbit determination.


Author(s):  
Ping Zhang ◽  
Bei Li ◽  
Guanglong Du

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a wearable-based human-manipulator interface which integrates the interval Kalman filter (IKF), unscented Kalman filter (UKF), over damping method (ODM) and adaptive multispace transformation (AMT) to perform immersive human-manipulator interaction by interacting the natural and continuous motion of the human operator’s hand with the robot manipulator. Design/methodology/approach – The interface requires that a wearable watch is tightly worn on the operator’s hand to track the continuous movements of the operator’s hand. Nevertheless, the measurement errors generated by the sensor error and tracking failure signicantly occur several times, which means that the measurement is not determined with sufficient accuracy. Due to this fact, IKF and UKF are used to compensate for the noisy and incomplete measurements, and ODM is established to eliminate the influence of the error signals like data jitter. Furthermore, to be subject to the inherent perceptive limitations of the human operator and the motor, AMT that focuses on a secondary treatment is also introduced. Findings – Experimental studies on the GOOGOL GRB3016 robot show that such a wearable-based interface that incorporates the feedback mechanism and hybrid filters can operate the robot manipulator more flexibly and advantageously even if the operator is nonprofessional; the feedback mechanism introduced here can successfully assist in improving the performance of the interface. Originality/value – The interface uses one wearable watch to simultaneously track the orientation and position of the operator’s hand; it is not only avoids problems of occlusion, identification and limited operating space, but also realizes a kind of two-way human-manipulator interaction, a feedback mechanism can be triggered in the watch to reflect the system states in real time. Furthermore, the interface gets rid of the synchronization question in posture estimation, as hybrid filters work independently to compensate the noisy measurements respectively.


Author(s):  
Marouane Rayyam ◽  
Malika Zazi ◽  
Youssef Barradi

PurposeTo improve sensorless control of induction motor using Kalman filtering family, this paper aims to introduce a new metaheuristic optimizer algorithm for online rotor speed and flux estimation.Design/methodology/approachThe main problem with unscented Kalman filter (UKF) observer is its sensibility to the initial values of Q and R. To solve the optimal solution of these matrices, a novel alternative called ant lion optimization (ALO)-UKF is introduced. It is based on the combination of the classical UKF observer and a nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm, ALO.FindingsSynthesized ALO-UKF has given good results over the famous extended Kalman filter and the classical UKF observer in terms of accuracy and dynamic performance. A comparison between ALO and particle swarm optimization (PSO) was established. Simulations illustrate that ALO recovers rapidly and accurately while PSO has a slower convergence.Originality/valueUsing the proposed approach, tuning the design matrices Q and R in Kalman filtering becomes an easy task with a high degree of accuracy and the constraints of time cost are surmounted. Also, ALO-UKF is an efficient tool to improve estimation performance of states and parameters’ uncertainties of the induction motor. Related optimization technique can be extended to faults monitoring by online identification of their corresponding signatures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (06) ◽  
pp. 1550016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsen Askari ◽  
Jianchun Li ◽  
Bijan Samali

System identification refers to the process of building or improving mathematical models of dynamical systems from the observed experimental input–output data. In the area of civil engineering, the estimation of the integrity of a structure under dynamic loadings and during service condition has become a challenge for the engineering community. Therefore, there has been a great deal of attention paid to online and real-time structural identification, especially when input–output measurement data are contaminated by high-level noise. Among real-time identification methods, one of the most successful and widely used algorithms for estimation of system states and parameters is the Kalman filter and its various nonlinear extensions such as extended Kalman filter (EKF), Iterated EKF (IEKF), the recently developed unscented Kalman filter (UKF) and Iterated UKF (IUKF). In this paper, an investigation has been carried out on the aforementioned techniques for their effectiveness and efficiencies through a highly nonlinear single degree of freedom (SDOF) structure as well as a two-storey linear structure. Although IEKF is an improved version of EKF, results show that IUKF generally produces better results in terms of structural parameters and state estimation than UKF and IEKF. Also IUKF is more robust to noise levels compared to the other approaches.


Author(s):  
Seokyoung Ahn ◽  
Joseph J. Beaman ◽  
Rodney L. Williamson ◽  
David K. Melgaard

Electroslag Remelting (ESR) is used widely throughout the specialty metals industry. The process generally consists of a regularly shaped electrode that is immersed a small amount in liquid slag at a temperature higher than the melting temperature of the electrode. Melting droplets from the electrode fall through the lower density slag into a liquid pool constrained by a crucible and solidify into an ingot. High quality ingots require that electrode melt rate and immersion depth be controlled. This can be difficult when process conditions are such that the temperature distribution in the electrode is not at steady state. A new method of ESR control has been developed that incorporates an accurate, reduced-order melting model to continually estimate the temperature distribution in the electrode. The ESR process is highly nonlinear, noisy, and has coupled dynamics. An extended Kalman filter and an unscented Kalman filter were chosen as possible estimators and compared in the controller design. During the highly transient periods in melting, the unscented Kalman filter showed superior performance for estimating and controlling the system.


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