Application of a Decentralized Observer with a Consensus Filter to Distributed Spacecraft Systems
Milan Mandić, Behcet A. Acikmese, Jason Lee Speyer · 2010
This paper presents an application of a novel decentralized observer with a consensus filter for the state estimation of discrete-time linear distributed space systems. In this setup, each agent has an observer with a model of the plant that utilizes the set of locally available measurements, which may not make the full plant state detectable for a single spacecraft. This lack of detectability is overcome by utilizing a consensus filter that blends the state estimate of each spacecraft with its neighbors’ estimates. We assume that the communication and sensing graphs are connected for all times. Simulations show the states estimates of the proposed observer asymptotically converge to the actual plant states under arbitrarily changing, but connected, communication and sensing topologies.