Micro-satellite detumbling mode attitude determination and control : UKF approach

in this paper, a novel method for micro-satellite attitude determination and control during the detumbling model is developed, analyzed, and simulation verified. The three-axes-magnetometer is suitable to use for small satellite requests low cost, low weight, and reliable attitude sensor. The B-Dot control law is a simple and reliable method that is suitable for this purpose. It uses three-axis-magnetometer to calculate the magnitude of the dipole moment with the magnetic torques that is amplified and reversed-directed to the derivative of the earth´s magnetic field vector in the rotating body frame. The attitude determination system needs to use a sequence of magnetometer measurements. These measurements process recursively in a Kalman filter. The Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) is estimated the attitude and attitude rates. In the filtering process, the magnetic field components are used to update as measurement is used to propagate the state vector, this strategy reduces the workload of computation effectively.