MMAE-based control redistribution applied to the VISTA F-16

A novel control technique, termed control redistribution, is presented and applied in conjunction with multiple model adaptive estimation (MMAE) to the variable in-night stability test aircraft (VISTA) F-16, to detect and compensate for sensor and/or actuator failures. This ad hoc method redistributes control commands (that would normally be sent to failed actuators) to the nonfailed actuators, accomplishing the same control action on the aircraft. Dither is considered to help disambiguate failures in the longitudinal and lateral-directional channels. Detection of both single-actuator and single-sensor failures is considered. Failures are demonstrated detectable in less than 1 s, with an aircraft output nearly identical to that anticipated from a fully functional aircraft in the same environment     

Array antennas for DGPS

Multipath interference limits the speed and accuracy of determining position by “differential” GPS techniques. A geodetic surveyor, for example, requires multipath interference rejection of about 36+20 log₁₀ sin ϵ dB, where ϵ is the elevation angle of the satellite being observed. Signal processing in a GPS receiver cannot satisfy this requirement. A receiving antenna is required that can sufficiently reject signals arriving from below the horizon. Available antennas have inadequate rejection, and brute-force methods of improving them, by enlarging their ground-planes, are impractical. A compact, ground-planeless, dual-band, GPS antenna with improved multipath rejection has been designed and field-tested. This antenna resembles a vertical post rather than a horizontal platter; within its 0.1-m diameter, 0.4-m tall radome is a vertical array of turnstile elements. In field tests, a three-element array antenna rejected multipath better than a 0.5-m diameter ground-plane antenna by an average of 5 dB. A five-element array antenna appears superior to a 0.9-m diameter ground-plane antenna     

Estimation of Aircraft Target Motion Using Orientation Measurements

A new approach to estimating motion of a highly maneuverable aircraft target in an air-to-air tracking scenario is presented. An interactive filter system is developed that provides an improved estimate of target motion states by conditioning kinematic filter estimates on target aspect angle data. Pattern recognition techniques used with an electrooptical tracker are presumed to provide this target aspect information. A target orientation filter processes the aspect angle measurements by statistically weighting measured aspect angles with the current best estimate of target kinematics. The aerodynamic lift equation is used to relate approximate angle of attack to target velocity and acceleration. A novel statistical model for aircraft target normal acceleration is also developed to represent better the unknown target accelerations. Simulation results of realistic three-dimensional scenarios are presented to evaluate the performance of the interactive filter system.     

Reconfigurable flight control via multiple model adaptive controlmethods

An aircraft flight control system with reconfigurable capabilities is considered. A multiple model adaptive controller (MMAC) is shown to provide effective reconfigurability when subjected to single and double failures of sensors and/or actuators. A command generator tracker/proportional-plus-integral/Kalman filter (CGT/PI/KF) form of controller was chosen for each of the elemental controllers within the MMAC algorithm and each was designed via LQG synthesis to provide desirable vehicle behavior for a particular failure status of sensors and actuators. The MMAC performance is enhanced by an alternate computation of the MMAC hypothesis probabilities, use of maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) versus Bayesian form of the MAC (or a modified combination of both), and reduction of identification ambiguities through scalar residual monitoring for the case of sensor failures     

Torque disturbance rejection in high accuracy tracking systems

The possibility of rejecting torque disturbances that degrade the pointing and tracking accuracy of electromechanical pedestals and general two-axis systems used for target acquisition and robotics is discussed. Torque rejection achieved through disturbance estimation and compensation results in a vast improvement in pointing accuracy. For the class of disturbances considered, comparisons of a classical loop configuration of a tracker, modeled as a two-mass system, with the state-space solution indicate that at least an order-of-magnitude improvement in tracking error can be achieved     

Second-order acceleration models for an MMAE target tracker

The performance of a multiple model adaptive estimator (MMAE) for an enhanced correlator/forward-looking-infrared tracker for airborne targets is analyzed in order to improve its performance. Performance evaluation is based on elemental filter selection and MMAE estimation error sizes and trends. The elemental filters are based on either first or second-order acceleration models. Improved filter selection is achieved by using acceleration models that separate the frequency content of acceleration power spectral densities into non-overlapping regions with second-order models versus the more traditional overlapping regions with first-order models. A revised tuning method is presented. The maximum a posteriori (MAP) versus the Bayesian MMAE is investigated. The calculation of the hypothesis probability calculation is altered to see how performance is affected. The impact of the ad hoc selection of a lower bound on the elemental filter probability calculation to prevent filter lockout is evaluated. Parameter space discretization is investigated     

Target tracking using infrared measurements and laser illumination

A missile target tracker is designed using a filter/correlator (with adaptive target shape identification) based on forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor measurements to track the center-of-intensity of the hardbody/plume combination, and another filter using Doppler and/or speckle information in the return from a low-power laser illuminator to estimate the offset between the intensity centroid and the hardbody center-of-mass. The Doppler information is shown to yield smaller bias and error variance from the tracker than the speckle information. Performance of trackers based on just Doppler or both Doppler and speckle information from the laser return is portrayed as a function of important parameters in the tracking environment     

Flexible spacestructure control via moving-bank multiple modelalgorithms

The development and performance of moving-bank multiple model adaptive control (MMAC) algorithms for quelling vibrations induced in the SPICE 2 space structure are presented. The structure consists of a large platform and a smaller platform connected by three legs in a tripod fashion. Deviations of the line-of-sight (LOS) vector from the center of the large platform to the center of the smaller platform are used for LQG controller performance evaluation. The parameter estimator implements the maximum entropy with identity covariance (ME/I) algorithm; the moving-bank logic employs parameter position monitoring; the controller uses the modified MMAC method. Whereas parameter variations of two percent caused instabilities in the single filter/controller design, the MMAC algorithm provides an excellent method to estimate a wide range of parameter variations and to quell oscillations in the structure     

The Mercury Dual Imaging System on the MESSENGER Spacecraft

The Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft will provide critical measurements tracing Mercury’s origin and evolution. MDIS consists of a monochrome narrow-angle camera (NAC) and a multispectral wide-angle camera (WAC). The NAC is a 1.5° field-of-view (FOV) off-axis reflector, coaligned with the WAC, a four-element refractor with a 10.5° FOV and 12-color filter wheel. The focal plane electronics of each camera are identical and use a 1,024×1,024 Atmel (Thomson) TH7888A charge-coupled device detector. Only one camera operates at a time, allowing them to share a common set of control electronics. The NAC and the WAC are mounted on a pivoting platform that provides a 90° field-of-regard, extending 40° sunward and 50° anti-sunward from the spacecraft +Z-axis—the boresight direction of most of MESSENGER’s instruments. Onboard data compression provides capabilities for pixel binning, remapping of 12-bit data into 8 bits, and lossless or lossy compression. MDIS will acquire four main data sets at Mercury during three flybys and the two-Mercury-solar-day nominal mission: a monochrome global image mosaic at near-zero emission angles and moderate incidence angles, a stereo-complement map at off-nadir geometry and near-identical lighting, multicolor images at low incidence angles, and targeted high-resolution images of key surface features. These data will be used to construct a global image base map, a digital terrain model, global maps of color properties, and mosaics of high-resolution image strips. Analysis of these data will provide information on Mercury’s impact history, tectonic processes, the composition and emplacement history of volcanic materials, and the thickness distribution and compositional variations of crustal materials. This paper summarizes MDIS’s science objectives and technical design, including the common payload design of the MDIS data processing units, as well as detailed results from ground and early flight calibrations and plans for Mercury image products to be generated from MDIS data.