Regularized robust filter for attitude determination system with relative installation error of star trackers

As one of the most critical issues for high-accuracy satellite attitude determination, the relative installation error of star tracker usually leads to inconsistency of the output attitude information. In this paper, an approach named regularized robust filter algorithm is proposed to control the relative installation error of star tracker in the attitude measurement data. Based on the uncertainty model established for the attitude measurement system, the weighted least square solution is presented and the regularized robust filter is deduced firstly. The algorithm parameters are then optimized with the design indices in order to minimize the upper boundary for the variance of the estimated error. Compared with the traditional Kalman filter, the regularized robust filter takes into consideration the effects of model uncertainty, which can be used to optimize the filter parameters during its design stage. Thus, the information of both the system model and the measurement data can be applied effectively. Moreover, the existence conditions need not be validated in the proposed filter algorithm, which is convenient for on-orbit application. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed method. The relative installation error of attitude determination is mostly reduced and the estimation precision is improved greatly.