Dae-Eun Kang
Yonsei University
South Korea
Title: Development of Relative Navigation Test-bed using GPS and Femtosecond Laser
Biography
Biography: Dae-Eun Kang
Abstract
Formation flying using small satellites can be operated with lower budget. There are various formation flying missions. A precise relative navigation system is required to operate the formation flying with good performance. Sometimes a laser distance meter is utilized as distance measurement data for precise relative navigation. Many previous studies [1-3] have used the laser distance data generated by software-based simulator which was formulated by femtosecond laser ranging theory. However, the previous studies did not include information from a real distance meter. The current study will present a real-time relative navigation test-bed based on GPS signal and miniaturized femtosecond laser distance meter. For this study, the laser simulator is developed to include actual hardware properties omitted in the former software-based simulator. An ultimate goal is to replace the laser data of software-based simulator with real measured data by the hardware of the laser distance meter. Short-distance simulations can be performed with a raw data measured by the distance meter. On the other hand, the measurement data should be generated by the simulator for long-distance simulations. To generate long distance information, the hardware properties should be improved to include the characteristics of design parameters and measurement errors. The design parameters in the simulator are modulated same as the manufactured instrument. The design parameters are associated with random noise of measured data. If a mathematical relation between them is deduced, the parameters can be estimated for a long-distance navigation in formation flying. The measurement errors of instrument contain not only errors of laser hardware parts but also errors of other device parts. The test-bed is developed by adding the errors of the device parts to the previous software-based data. With the integrated test-bed, the results can be used for a relative navigation utilizing femtosecond laser ranging data. The relative navigation algorithm developed in this study will be verified for spacecraft formation flying mission.