NONLINEAR OBSERVER VIA EXTENDED KALMAN FILTER ALGORITHM FOR EULER ANGLES ESTIMATION WITHOUT ATTITUDE SENSOR MEASUREMENTS

This paper designs and investigates an observer system via Extended Kalman Filter algorithm to estimate the satellite’s Euler angles attitude during the absence of the attitude sensor measurement. This work contributes as a backup or an alternative system during unavailable attitude sensor measurement due to malfunction sensor or for cost reduction by reducing the number of sensors. In this work, the observer model for satellite attitude is presented in their non-simplified nonlinear form by combining the Euler’s Moment Equation and kinematics Euler angles parameter. The performance of the designed observer via Extended Kalman Filter algorithm is analyzed and verified using real flight data of Malaysian satellite.