Assessment of the close approach frequency and collision probability for satellites in different configurations of large constellations

The Earth orbital environment is drastically changing due to an intensification of the space activities. In particular, several projects of large constellations, proposed for the next years for communications purpose like global internet access, Internet of Things, or for Earth observations, will lead to the deployment of several thousands of new satellites at an unprecedented rate. It is a crucial challenge for space traffic management, which will deal with a great number of satellite conjunctions, potentially causing a collision with damaging consequences for the constellation itself and the space environment sustainability.In this paper, we investigate the close approach frequency and the cumulative collision probability for each referenced constellation. For this purpose, we compute the orbital evolution of satellites in different constellations during the lifecycle, from the deployment to the decommissioning, and we apply the CUBE algorithm and the Foster method to assess the collision probability with the background space debris population assuming a constant uncertainty in position. We show the variation of risk defined by the close approach frequency and the cumulative collision probability as a function of the proposed configuration. In particular, satellites of the Iridium and Kuiper constellation, but also satellite of the Telesat constellation on polar orbits are the most exposed at a collision. Moreover, the decommissioning phase contribute for a major part to the final cumulative collision probability.     

导航卫星中断频次的分析方法

面向导航卫星中断频次的定量分析需求,该文分析导航卫星中断产生的主要原因,给出中断频次分析的流程,并针对分析过程中的三个关键问题,研究提出具体实施方法,包括通过相关性分析快速定位底层中断事件,通过中断树建立指标分析模型,并融合在轨数据、地面试验数据快速预估得到底层功能异常率等。最后通过示例进一步说明中断频次分析过程。该文方法已应用于北斗导航卫星工程。     

Orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamics of tethered solar power satellite

A new orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamic model of the tethered solar power satellite (Tethered SPS) is established based on absolute nodal coordinate formulation. The Hamilton’s equation of the system is derived by introducing generalized momentum through Legendre transformation. The correctness of the proposed model is verified by an example. The dynamic characteristics of the Tethered SPS are studied using the symplectic Runge-Kutta method. Simulation results show that the orbital radius and the total energy of the system are well preserved. The attitude of the system is unstable when the mass of the bus system is small. However, the attitude stability is dependent on some other parameters of the system, which requires further studies. It is also found that the average tether force/deformation can be roughly estimated by simplifying the solar panel as a particle. The proposed model can be used to study the orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamics and control problems.     

Estimating the spin axis orientation of the Echostar-2 box-wing geosynchronous satellite

For the first time, the spin axis orientation of an inactive box-wing geosynchronous satellite has been estimated from ground-based optical photometric observations of Echostar-2’s specular reflections. Recent photometric light curves obtained of Echostar-2 over four years suggest that unusually bright and brief specular reflections were occurring twice within an observed spin period. These bright and brief specular reflections suggested two satellite surfaces with surface normals separated by approximately 180°. The geometry between the satellite, the Sun, and the observing location at the time of each of the brightest observed reflections, was used to estimate Echostar-2’s equatorial spin axis orientation coordinates. When considering prograde and retrograde rotation, Echostar-2’s spin axis orientation was estimated to have been located within 30° of either equatorial coordinate pole. Echostar-2’s spin axis was observed to have moved approximately 180° in right ascension, within a time span of six months, suggesting a roughly one year spin axis precession period about the satellite’s angular momentum vector.     

Fully distributed time-varying formation tracking control for multiple quadrotor vehicles via finite-time convergent extended state observer

This paper investigates a time-varying anti-disturbance formation problem for a group of quadrotor aircrafts with time-varying uncertainties and a directed interaction topology. A novel Finite-Time Convergent Extended State Observer (FTCESO) based fully-distributed formation control scheme is proposed to enhance the disturbance rejection and the formation tracking performances for networked quadrotors. By adopting the hierarchical control strategy, the multi-quadrotor system is separated into two subsystems: the outer-loop cooperative subsystem and the inner-loop attitude subsystem. In the outer-loop subsystem, with the estimation of disturbing forces and uncertain dynamics from FTCESOs, an adaptive consensus theory based cooperative controller is exploited to ensure the multiple quadrotors form and maintain a time-varying pattern relying only on the positions of the neighboring aircrafts. In the inner-loop subsystem, the desired attitude generated by the cooperative control law is stably tracked under a FTCESO-based attitude controller in a finite time. Based on a detailed algorithm to specify the cooperative control protocol, the feasibility condition to achieve the time-varying anti-disturbance formation tracking is derived and the rigorous analysis of the whole closed-loop multi-quadrotor system is given. Some numerical examples are conducted to intuitively demonstrate the effectiveness and the improvements of the proposed control framework.     

Optimization of bits allocation and path planning with trajectory constraint in UAV-enabled mobile edge computing system

In this paper, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) enabled Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) system is studied, in which UAV acts as server to offer computing offloading service to the Mobile Users (MUs) with limited computing capability and energy budget. We aim to minimize the total energy consumption of MUs by jointly optimizing the bit allocation for uplink, computing at the UAV and downlink, along with the UAV trajectory in a unified framework. To this end, a trajectory constraint model is employed to avoid sudden changes of velocity and acceleration during flying. Due to high-order information in use, we lead to a more reasonable nonconvex optimization problem than prior arts. An Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) method is introduced to solve the optimization problem, which is decomposed into a set of easy sub-problems, to meet the requirement on the efficiency in edge computing. Numerical results demonstrate that our approach leads a smoother UAV trajectory, significantly save the energy consumption for UAV during flying.     

Evaluation of a regional real-time precise positioning system based on GPS/BeiDou observations in Australia

The performance of real-time (RT) precise positioning can be improved by utilizing observations from multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) instead of one particular system. Since the end of 2012, BeiDou, independently established by China, began to provide operational services for users in the Asia-Pacific regions. In this study, a regional RT precise positioning system is developed to evaluate the performance of GPS/BeiDou observations in Australia in providing high precision positioning services for users. Fixing three hourly updated satellite orbits, RT correction messages are generated and broadcasted by processing RT observation/navigation data streams from the national network of GNSS Continuously Operating Reference Stations in Australia (AUSCORS) at the server side. At the user side, RT PPP is realized by processing RT data streams and the RT correction messages received. RT clock offsets, for which the accuracy reached 0.07 and 0.28?ns for GPS and BeiDou, respectively, can be determined. Based on these corrections, an accuracy of 12.2, 30.0 and 45.6?cm in the North, East and Up directions was achieved for the BeiDou-only solution after 30 min while the GPS-only solution reached 5.1, 15.3 and 15.5?cm for the same components at the same time. A further improvement of 43.7, 36.9 and 45.0 percent in the three directions, respectively, was achieved for the combined GPS/BeiDou solution. After the initialization process, the North, East and Up positioning accuracies were 5.2, 8.1 and 17.8?cm, respectively, for the BeiDou-only solution, while 1.5, 3.0, and 4.7?cm for the GPS-only solution. However, we only noticed a 20.9% improvement in the East direction was obtained for the GPS/BeiDou solution, while no improvements in the other directions were detected. It is expected that such improvements may become bigger with the increasing accuracy of the BeiDou-only solution.     

A robust object-based shadow detection method for cloud-free high resolution satellite images over urban areas and water bodies

Unwanted contrast in high resolution satellite images such as shadow areas directly affects the result of further processing in urban remote sensing images. Detecting and finding the precise position of shadows is critical in different remote sensing processing chains such as change detection, image classification and digital elevation model generation from stereo images. The spectral similarity between shadow areas, water bodies, and some dark asphalt roads makes the development of robust shadow detection algorithms challenging. In addition, most of the existing methods work on pixel-level and neglect the contextual information contained in neighboring pixels. In this paper, a new object-based shadow detection framework is introduced. In the proposed method a pixel-level shadow mask is built by extending established thresholding methods with a new C₄ index which enables to solve the ambiguity of shadow and water bodies. Then the pixel-based results are further processed in an object-based majority analysis to detect the final shadow objects. Four different high resolution satellite images are used to validate this new approach. The result shows the superiority of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art shadow detection method with an average of 96% in F-measure.     

航空电子产品电磁环境效应模块化设计方法

对高强度辐射场（HIRF）环境特点与干扰类型进行分析，采用理论计算、计算机仿真技术（CST）的仿真分析及实测等方法分别对某型飞机航空电子系统综合显示单元的外部强电磁辐射场孔缝耦合、场线耦合及芯片前端电路影响关键芯片的相关规律进行了研究，给出了相关设计建议。结果表明，可通过分析孔缝、场线耦合获得进入关键芯片前端电路的电磁干扰能量，再结合关键芯片前端电路网络对干扰的插入损耗分析，获得关键芯片在外部强场激励下的感应电压。