Relative Navigation Based on Adaptive UKF Technology for Satellites Formation Flying

Jiangfei WU, wjf015@163.com, Institute of Surveying and Mapping, Information Engineering University, Zhengzhou, China

Abstract
Formation flying is commonly identified as the collective usage of two or more cooperative satellites to exercise the function of a single monolithic virtual instrument. The distribution of tasks and payloads among fleets of coordinated smaller satellites offers the possibility to overcome the limitations of traditional single-satellite systems. For maintaining and controlling of formation configuration, the accurate relative position and velocity must be precise determined. High accuracy relative navigation is a key technology of satellites formation flying. Aiming at the nonlinearity of relative movement among satellites and the adverse effects of observation abnormal error and dynamic abnormal error to relative navigation results, a new relative navigation algorithm based on adaptive UKF thchnology for satellites formation flying is proposed. Simulation results show that, compared with the traditional EKF method, the new algorithm could effectively improve filtering stability and relative navigation accuracy, and can meet the requirements of high accuracy relative navigation for satellites formation flying. Keywords: adaptive Unscented Kalman filter; formation flying; relative navigation; algorithm