Pico satellite attitude estimation via Robust Unscented Kalman Filter in the presence of measurement faults

In the normal operation conditions of a pico satellite, a conventional Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) gives sufficiently good estimation results. However, if the measurements are not reliable because of any kind of malfunction in the estimation system, UKF gives inaccurate results and diverges by time. This study introduces Robust Unscented Kalman Filter (RUKF) algorithms with the filter gain correction for the case of measurement malfunctions. By the use of defined variables named as measurement noise scale factor, the faulty measurements are taken into consideration with a small weight, and the estimations are corrected without affecting the characteristics of the accurate ones. Two different RUKF algorithms, one with single scale factor and one with multiple scale factors, are proposed and applied for the attitude estimation process of a pico satellite. The results of these algorithms are compared for different types of measurement faults in different estimation scenarios and recommendations about their applications are given. (C) 2010 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.