Distributed H∞-Consensus Filtering for Attitude Tracking Using Ground-Based Radars

This paper is concerned with the distributed H _∞-consensus filtering problem on attitude tracking over a radar filter network subject to switching topology and random packet dropouts occurring in the data transmission from both the Sun sensor and the filters. Since ground-based radars cannot directly measure the satellite attitude, a Sun sensor is deployed at the satellite side and its measurements are transmitted to radar filters through different network communication channels while suffering from random packet dropouts with different probabilities. In the radar filter network, each radar filter receives data not only from the Sun sensor but also from its local neighboring radar filters in accordance with a switching network topology. A delicate distributed H _∞-consensus filtering algorithm, which incorporates the effects of switching network topology and random packet dropouts, is adopted to estimate attitude and attitude-rate. The algorithm guarantees H _∞-consensus attenuation performance for the estimation deviations among radar filters, and the robustness against the switching network topology and packet dropouts for the radar filter network. The illustrative examples are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed distributed H _∞-consensus filtering algorithm.