On the ability of sliding mode and LQR controllers optimized with PSO in attitude control of a flexible 4-DOF satellite with time-varying payload

Precise pointing of the satellite and its payload is essential in the accurate accomplishment of a space mission. In this study, the system of a satellite and its payload are considered as 4-DOF equations of motion. The time-varying payload can observe one direction of the Earth independently, and the satellite can point to the Earth station by its 3-DOF motions simultaneously. Sliding mode and LQR controllers are designed for damping disturbances, and consequently high pointing accuracy. Environmental disturbances and the associated time delay of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) are applied to the system. An algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is proposed to find the optimum values of variables and Normalized Integral Square Error (NISE) of the two aforementioned controllers. Numerical simulations indicate the optimized magnitudes of target detection errors and control efforts in four directions. The results revealed that PSO-SMC can finely track the time-varying payload and has better efficiency in comparison with PSO-LQR.